Page 6 of Surprise Twins for the Mafia Prince
“I’m in the bathroom,” I call out, my voice cracking.
A moment later, the door opens, and Rosa comes in with a bright smile on her face. “I hope you don’t mind that I used my emergency key. I tried knocking, but you didn’t answer.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I was distracted.”
I gesture to the pregnancy test, and Rosa lets out an excited squeal that pierces my eardrums. “Oh my God! You already took it. It’s positive, right? It has to be. You said you missed your period, right? And you’ve been so tired lately.”
I can’t help chuckling, my mood lightening in the face of her excitement. Rosa has always been an expressive person, her emotions always out on display for everyone to see.
“Yeah, I guess that this whole growing-a-person thing is exhausting.”
“This is so exciting,” Rosa says, but her smile fades as she squats in front of me, taking my hand. “It is, right? I mean...how do you feel about it?”
She’s nibbling her bottom lip nervously, worried that she’s made the wrong assumption about my feelings. I think about it, forcing myself to push aside my disgust for the Andrettis and focus on my child.
“I’m...not entirely sure.” I’m hoping that doesn’t make me an even worse mother.
Oh my God, I’m going to be a mother.
That’s going to take some getting used to. Since I lost both of my parents and my brother moved hundreds of miles away, I’ve wanted to create a family of my own. Having kids has always been part of the plan, but I thought I wouldplanfor it. Preferably, once I was married to a man that I love.
Instead, it looks like I’m doing the single mom thing with a baby whose father would probably rather see me dead than discover I’m carrying his kid.
I can’t even begin to imagine how this is going to impact my life. At twenty-five, I don’t have things figured out at all.
I don’t know what career I want. I fell into being a medical transcriptionist because I saw a job opening a couple of yearsago and needed a source of income. I thought I’d have time to choose a better path, but how will that work with a baby around?
I’m trying not to freak out, but I can’t help wondering if I can be a good mother with my baggage. I didn’t exactly have a good example. Not that it was her fault. My mother suffered for a long time after my father’s sudden death when I was a little girl.
“Let’s get out of the bathroom, okay?” Rosa suggests, and I realize that I’ve been staring into space for a while, contemplating the way my life is about to change.
I stand and grab the pregnancy test off the sink. As we pass through the kitchen of my little house, Rosa stops, noticing a bucket on the island with water dripping into it from the ceiling.
“What’s this?” she asks, and my hand tightens on the pregnancy test.
I almost forgot that my roof is leaking, just another element contributing to my high stress level. I can’t have a baby in this place if I can’t even get the roof fixed.
“I called my landlord three times over the last week. He keeps saying he’ll get to it. He says there’s no hurry because we live in Phoenix.”
Rosa snorts. “Yeah, but it’s monsoon season. This is the second time it’s rained in a week.”
I shake my head as the drip-drip-drip sound of the water dropping into the bucket ratchets up my anxiety.
“That’s what I told the jerk.” I groan and toss the pregnancy test into the kitchen trash before sitting on a stool at the island. “He never wants to fix anything. Do you remember when the air conditioning went out a few months ago? It took forever forhim to fix it. What if something else goes wrong after the baby comes? And where is the baby supposed to sleep? I only have one bedroom. Don’t they say it’s bad for a baby to sleep in your bed with you?”
I know I’m rambling, but I can’t seem to stop myself. This is huge, and I think it’s just hitting me like a freight train. Wanting kids isn’t a guarantee that I’ll be a good mother. What if I screw up? What if I end up like my mom? Broken and lost and unable to keep the darkness from consuming me?
Rosa places a hand on my arm and gives it a squeeze, grounding me. “You have nine months to figure all that out.”
“Nine months doesn’t seem long enough to learn everything I need to know. I just realized...I’ve never even held a baby before.”
“What about the dad? Who is it?”
A criminal. A mafia man. A killer.
An Andretti.
“You remember that night in Vegas? The guy I met at the nightclub?”
