Page 37 of Mafia Doctor's Secret Baby

“Give me the food,” I tell him once more, trying to steady the shake in my voice. “That’s all I’m asking. Please.”

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” he goes on, almost casual, as he strides into the room and turns to face me. I’m right next to the open door. I glance over to it, and he presses his hand against the gun at his side.

“If you think you’re going to play action hero and run out of here,” he warns me, “you’ve got another thing coming.”

I turn to face him, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. I don’t feel safe being alone in a room with this man. God knows what he will do to me. God knows what he has already done to so many women who have found themselves in the same position I am right now…

“We get plenty of girls staying here,” he tells me. “Girls who come to work for us. Not the kind of work you’re used to, though.”

“I know what you do,” I grit out, forcing myself to look at him. I’m not going to let him think he succeeded in getting under my skin with all of this. I’m better than this, better than he’s giving me credit for.

“Oh, you do, do you?” he chuckles. “And you still got involved with Luca. Seems like you must have known you were risking us coming after you, huh?”

“Of course I?—”

“Maybe you even wanted this,” he continues, leaning in close to me, his foul breath suddenly filling my senses. I almost gag at the scent of it, but there’s nothing in my stomach to bring up, acid burning in my throat instead.

“Maybe you were hoping you’d be brought in and turned into the version of yourself you know you want to be,” he suggests, reaching out to run a finger down my cheek. His nail is sharp, tugging at my skin, and I twist away from him. I don’t want him touching me, can’t stand the thought of it. My entire body feels as though it’s going to heave in protest, but at the same time, I’m frozen to the spot, too terrified to move, too terrified to find out what happens if I outright reject his advances.

“But even if you didn’t,” he remarks. “You’d learn how. You’d have to.”

And with that, he tosses the bag of food onto the floor. I pounce down on it and tear it open, stuffing hunks of potato chips into my mouth, barely even tasting them as I chew them down and swallow.

“You can have this for free for now,” he sneers at me. “But don’t think you’re going to be getting a lot of that down the line, you hear me?”

I don’t even look up at him—I barely dare to. As he heads for the door, I realize I can hear something. I glance up in the moment before the door swings shut, and I catch sight of the corridor outside. To my horror, I realize that there are other doors there, other doors just like mine.

And the noise that has attracted my attention is of women screaming for help.

I stop eating—I feel like I’m going to bring up everything that’s already in my stomach. I can’t take this. I can’t take the thought of other people being stuck here too, other people having to face off against this hellish nightmare. How many of us are there in here? How many of them will be used in their sick brothels?

I sink down into the corner once more, the cold terror of realization shuddering through my body. No—no. This can’t be real. It can’t be…

The last light fades out of the room and leaves me sitting in darkness once more. All I can do is stare off into space, my head full of the cries I just heard. Those women might have heard me, too, if they were lucky enough to get something to eat. Or perhaps that man has been slipping into their rooms for other reasons entirely…

If what he said is anything to go by, then I’m going to have to start earning my keep here sooner rather than later. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I know, sure as hell, that I am not going to like it.

I draw my knees up to my chest and rest my chin against them, closing my eyes. I need to sleep. I know my dreams are going to be anything but easy tonight—but that doesn’t matter. I’m going to need to have my wits about me for when that man comes back.

Because I won’t let him lay a hand on me without fighting tooth and nail first.

18

LUCA

I carefully layPolly down in her crib. Her eyes fall shut almost immediately, and I can’t help but smile as I watch her drift off into restfulness.

I’m glad she’s starting to get more comfortable being here with Emil and me. It’s been a couple of days—a couple of days too long, as far as I’m concerned—since it all went down, and Emil has been going all over the city, picking up any intel he can, piecing together what happened and where they might have taken Katie.

Polly struggled the first day, but the second, she seemed to grow a little more comfortable in my presence. A double-edged sword, that’s for sure, because as much as I’m glad that she’s not panicking around me any longer, I don’t want her to get too attached to me. If this whole mess has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t stick around here after Katie has been rescued. My presence is far too much of a threat for the two of them, and I’m not going to inflict anything else like this on them again.

I hear the door click as Emil comes inside, and I head out to see what he’s got for me. We’ve managed to pull together a decentpicture of everything that happened that day, though a few details are hazy. Emil spoke to an old enforcer of ours who told us that one of the Maglione men had warned people to stay away from Katie’s street on the night before the attack, so they must have followed me there from the hospital. The thought of them on my tail all that time, planning this attack, makes me feel sick, but it’s not like I can go back and change that now.

But the question remains—where have they taken her? We can’t scout around the most likely spots in the city without attracting attention. When we make our hit, it has to be quick, accurate, and brutal. There are a few places the Magliones use when they’re in the city, but if we approach the wrong one, we could be taken out in an instant.

Emil nods at me in greeting, and launches straight into everything that he’s been able to figure out since he left earlier in the day.

“I met with one of my old friends,” he tells me, gesturing for me to take a seat on the couches surrounding the hearth in my living room. I sink down into one, and raise my eyebrows at him expectantly, indicating that I’m ready for him to come out with it.

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