Page 6 of Mafia Doctor's Secret Baby

“Holy shit!” she exclaims, her voice echoing off the sterile walls of the hospital room around us. “It’s—you’re?—”

“Oh, so the mask didn’t do that much to hide who I was, then?” I shoot back.

Running into a woman I’ve slept with at work is bad enough—but running into a woman at work who I slept with nine months ago, who has just given birth to a little girl with the exact color of dark hair I have? Yeah, this is code fucking red, and I need to do everything I can to figure out just how bad this is.

“You—what are you doing here?” she asks, her eyes darting around as though someone might burst in at any moment to reveal themselves as the real doctor. I almost laugh.

“I’m your doctor,” I remind her.

“Yeah, but you were?—”

“You have no idea who I am,” I tell her. “Remember? That’s the whole point of the party. Everyone gets to leave behind who they really are for a while. And usually, it stays that way. But…”

But you’ve just had a baby, and I have every reason to think that thing belongs to me.

“Well, uh, I guess it’s just a coincidence,” she replies weakly, but I’m not buying a word that comes out of her mouth.

I narrow my eyes at her. “Yeah. Lucky coincidence,” I fire back. “Otherwise I’d never have known you were having my baby.”

She snorts loudly. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Careful,” I warn her. “I don’t take well to lying. And besides, you just had a baby. You want to be mindful of the language you use around her.”

Something about my tone seems to stop her in her tracks, and she shifts in the bed.

“You’re crazy,” she tells me. “I—this baby has nothing to do with you. You think that just because we had sex a few months ago, you’re the father?”

“No, that’s not why I think that,” I reply, keeping my voice as steady and calm as I can, given the circumstances. “I think that because we had sex nine months ago, and then you turn up at the hospital with nothing but a female friend for company.”

“How do you know—” She halts herself before she can reveal to much, and pushes a hand through her damp, sweaty hair. Even like this, her auburn hair a mess, her body spent, she looks gorgeous.

I can still remember laying eyes on her at that party, and knowing in that instant that I was going to do anything in my power to make her mine. I was attending from out of town, returning to pick up on an old tradition I followed in my medical school days. When I went back to my family’s home city a few hundred miles away, I gave it no more thought than that.

And it might have stayed that way, were it not for the fact that she’s staring back at me right now with this defiant expression on her face, practically begging me to keep arguing with her.

“You really think you can fool me?” I growl, dropping my voice pointedly. “Because, trust me, I’m not the kind of guy you want to lie to…”

“It’s none of your business,” she tells me. “I’m just here to have my baby and go. I don’t need any more of your help. I don’t?—”

I shift toward her slightly, and she tenses, falling silent in a split second. It’s clear she doesn’t entirely know how to deal with me. But if she thinks I’m going to let her walk out of this room without giving me a straight answer on the truth behind that little girl, then she has another thing coming.

“So, if it’s not me,” I begin slowly, “then who is it?”

“What do you mean…?”

“The father,” I reply. “Who’s the father? If you’re so sure it’s not me, then you must have a whole laundry list of other potentials, right?”

She glares up at me for a moment. “You think I’m just going around sleeping with everyone?” she protests. “I—it’s not like that. I just know it’s not you.”

“So there must have been another man around that time,” I continue, without breaking my stride for a moment. “Who is he? Tell me his name. We’ll need to put it down on the birth certificate, anyway. Let’s just get this cleared up, right here and now.”

Her eyes slide away from me again, toward the door. I know she’s longing for Gina to bustle back in with her baby, but I know it’s not going to happen. On her way out, I told Gina to give me a few extra minutes with this girl, so I could talk to her, and I intend to make the very most of every second I have.

“I’ll speak to Gina about it,” she replies, her voice dropping slightly. “It’s not—it’s not a big deal. Plenty of people have babies without the fathers being in their lives, I don’t owe an explanation to you or?—”

“Cut the shit,” I growl. She’s not offering up an alternative for how this might have happened, which leaves only one sensible option—I am the father.

And she’s doing everything she can to shield herself from the reality of that fact.

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