MOBSTER’S BABY_Esposito Family Mafia

by Nicole Fox

  Everything was soft blues and creams. Rose didn’t like pink—unless it was in roses, of course. I didn’t want for much and spending on my own daughter was as easy as blinking. I’d fixed the room with a good bed, matching dressers, even a tiny little vanity that at some point I figured we could replace with a larger one, when she was a teen. That’s how invested in all this I was. Unprepared as I was—I was in it for the long haul with Misha and Rose. I wondered if Misha knew that. I hoped she did.

  “I’m so beat,” Misha sighed out. “But we’ve got it. I’m glad I found those curtains and the rug. They bring it all together. I think she’ll love it.” Misha pulled out her phone—a new thing she’d been able to buy working at the diner—and checked the time. “It’s not too late, either. We might be able to pick up Rose a little early from Travis and Trixie. Those two are a godsend—”

  I stopped her words by rolling on top of her where we lay on the floor and kissing her. She seemed taken by surprise, but that was fine by me; I smiled against her lips as she relaxed and molded herself against me, wrapping her arms around.

  “Mmm … Before we continue … I hope you know … you’re not fucking me in our daughter’s bedroom …” Yet between her words, she kept kissing me. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “I wasn’t planning on that. I just wanted to kiss you. And tell you that … I’m really grateful for this, Misha.” I pulled back a little from her, looking her in the eyes. “I swear … everything I do and I am right now is for you and that little girl. Misha—”

  We both jumped at the sound of both our phones going off. We gave each other a confused look before disentangling ourselves from each other. I looked at my phone. It was Travis. I looked to Misha.

  “It’s Trixie.”

  Something uncomfortable settled into my stomach, and while Misha answered her phone, I answered mine.

  “What’s up, Travis?”

  “Yoooo, boss, we got a little thing. So like, Trixie and I, we took Rose to the park, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Everything was going great. Better than great. Trixie let me hold her hand and shit, even—”

  “Travis, I don’t give a shit. What’s going on?”

  “Okay, okay, anyway, so everything is going good, we’re watching Rose and shit, and Trixie and I get to talking. We’re talking, and I guess we got distracted—”

  “Did you fucking lose my daughter?” The words were out before I could stop them, but that’s where my mind went. A chilled, sudden fear and anger. “Travis, you dumb fuck—”

  “Woah, woah, boss, slow it down, I didn’t lose no children! One minute we look away, next we look up, some guy is talking to Rose. A Jackal. So I go over and ask what he wants. Rose knows the guy, but she’s damn fuckin’ scared, man, so I just walk her away and stare the guy down, I tell him he talks to her again, he’s getting a boot in his face. He don’t say nothing, don’t do nothing, but man, Rose is scared, and Trixie and I didn’t know what to do—”

  I hung up.

  Misha, on the other hand, was still on the phone.

  “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” she said. I could see her shaking, though, and knew that at least in some capacity, it was not okay. I walked to Misha and put my arm around her as she talked.

  “It’s okay, honey. Remember what I said? None of them would ever hurt you, because Mama will always protect you… Even when I’m not around, baby. Mamas are that powerful, more powerful than any bad man, okay? … Yes, sweetie … I promise … Yes, Trip and I can come get you … Okay, honey. Can you put Trixie back on the phone? Just remember to be good, okay? Hi, yeah, Trixie, we’re on our way. Please just stay there; it’ll spook her more if you don’t … Yeah. Yeah … Thank you so much.”

  Misha hung up and sighed. She was still shaking. I didn’t know what to make of any of this.

  “We need to go,” she said, heading out of Rose’s room.

  “I gathered. Misha, what the hell—”

  “Later, Trip,” she said firmly.

  There was something in the tone that told me to listen.

  Chapter Ten

  Misha

  Mama … Mama he said he was going to do those things again. And he said he was gonna do them to me. Mama, I’m scared.

  As Trip rode us through town, zipping through to the park that Trixie and Travis had taken Rose, her words repeated in my head. I had never heard Rose sound so scared—even when we were in the thick of living with the Jackals. Holland had always kept Rose from those things, even if it was only to keep me in line and make me less likely to run. Rigger, however … He’d made my little girl watch a lot more than any girl her age should. To think they’d found her—

  Found us.

  It terrified me to no end. Instinct made me want to pack up and run again, and the only thing that stayed those thoughts was how safe I felt wrapped around Trip. Trip was security. Trip was safety. I—I loved him. That would have to come together to work, somehow. Maybe.

  Damn, there were the doubts again.

  I couldn’t let the doubts dominate my mind as we pulled into the parking lot of the park. I was off the bike before Trip was, and ran over to where I saw Trixie and Travis standing with Rose. She clung to Trixie’s legs, but when she saw me she bounded over. The tears streaming down her face damn near broke my heart.

  “Mama!”

  I wrapped around her and scooped her up in my arms. I peppered her little face in kisses and whispered little loves against her skin.

  “It’s okay, baby. I told you it would be okay. Mama’s never lied, have I?”

  “No, Mama, no.”

  I nuzzled to her, and looked over to Trixie and Travis. They looked like they were afraid I would be angry at them, but I couldn’t muster the emotion. Mostly, I was worried.

  “Did he touch her at all?” was my first question.

  “God, no,” Trixie said. “No. He stood there and was talking to her when Travis walked over.”

  “Had one of them creepy ass grins on his face, though.” Travis shuddered. “Nasty fuck.”

  “Language.”

  It wasn’t me that said it, but Trip. He walked up to us, and ran his hand through Rose’s hair.

  “Are you okay, hun?”

  Rose sniffled against my neck.

  “Mmhm. I’m fine, Mr. Trip …”

  He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. If anything came out of this situation, the only heartwarming thing that had happened was over the fact that my daughter and my daughter’s father at least got a moment; I could appreciate Trip trying.

  “That’s good hun. Your mama and I finished your room in my—in our—house. You’ve had a long da., You wanna see it? You can finally hunker down with us.”

  Rose lifted her head to look at him. She sniffled again.

  “Really, Mr. Trip?”

  “Really.”

  Trixie tossed me her keys. “You can drive my Bug,” she said. “We’ll follow you guys.”

  Thirty minutes later, Travis, Rose, and I were in the kitchen, cooking as though we’d always been doing so.

  Rose stood on a little pull-out stool that Trip had, so she could reach the stove. Rich tomato sauce rolled and boiled in the pan, with a hearty helping of meatballs sizzling in the juices. It smelt heavenly with spices and herbs—my daddy’s recipe.

  Which was surprising to me, considering the fact that it was Trip who had suggested that we cook it in the first place.

  “You never told me that you knew my daddy’s spaghetti recipe,” I said, peering over at him from where I stirred and watched the noodles. He was letting Rose get a taste of the sauce.

  “More salt!” she ordered, like a little head chef. Trip laughed.

  “You got it, boss. Also.” He grinned over at me as he added another small dash for Rose’s approval. “Bobby always told me that a way to a girl’s father’s heart was to make him a meal that would make him fall in love with you. Now, I wasn’t about to get your da
ddy to wanna kiss me or nothing, but I figured knowing how to handle his prized spaghetti recipe couldn’t hurt. I mean—I never got the chance to test it out on him, but it’s worth the chance to test it out on his daughter, isn’t it?”

  I turned, hiding my smile.

  “What?”

  I giggled.

  “What?”

  “That is honestly the sappiest, sweetest thing that has ever come from your mouth, Trip,” I said. I looked over to him. “You really cared that much?”

  “I always cared that much, Misha.”

  Our eyes locked. The last hour had been … Not the easiest, but it was a lull in the tensions to have this ,and I knew we both felt it. I’d need to talk to him later, but for now, we were being a family.

  I really liked the sound of that.

  For the first evening, Trip, Rose, and I sat at a dining room table all together, eating dinner together as a family. I’d never thought that I would see this day—it was a dream that had seemed so out of reach while I was with the Jackals.

  I watched as Rose and Trip interacted. It was the first time without the boys around, or not in public in general, that Trip had time with Rose. I smiled as she gave him herrapt attention, as it seemed he wasn’t expecting her to be so receptive to him.

  “Mr. Trip, Mr. Travis says that you’ve never gotten in a wreck before. Is that true?”

  Trip nodded.

  “Mmhm. One of the only ones; because I actually know how to ride,” he said with a wink.

  “Ooooh. What’s that scar from, then?” She pointed a little pudgy finger to a fine line that peeked up over the collar of Trip’s shirt. I blushed at the memory; it wasn’t from a wreck, but I knew what it was from.

  “Well,” Trip said with you laugh. “That one was from your mama.”

  Rose gasped and turned her gaze to me.

  “You did that, Mama?!”

  “It was an accident!”

  “I was left traumatized.”

  “You laughed the whole time!”

  Trip let out another laugh, and set into the story.

  “Back when we were kids,” he started, “your mama and I did some really wild things. We weren’t as good and responsible as we are. I was teaching her how to throw knives, like darts, yanno? Only, she was terrible at it—”

  “You were trying to teach me how to throw while drunk!” I protested, tossing a napkin at him. He batted it out of his way playfully and laughed heartily at me.

  “We were both drinking, and we were both being really, really stupid, okay? Anyway, I was teaching your mama how to throw knives—”

  “Poorly.”

  “I was poorly teaching your mama how to throw knives, and one thing led to another and she kinda clipped me.”

  Rose looked at me, her little eyes wide.

  “Mama, you stabbed Mr. Trip!”

  “I accidentally managed to throw a knife at Mr. Trip, which is still his fault, because he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be teaching an impaired girl how to throw knives in the first place.”

  “I got a lot of really cool stitches, though,” Trip said, leaning over to Rose, whispering. “Like, really cool stiches.”

  “Woah!”

  “Alright, all right. Enough of that.”

  Dinner was easily the most relaxed I’d been, watching Trip finally cut loose with Rose. You couldn’t tell that she still didn’t know that he was her daddy; they interacted like father and daughter and for all of Trip’s apprehensions, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why he had had them in the first place.

  He was a natural.

  We cleaned up after dinner, Trip letting Rose stand on the stool so that she could reach the dishes in the water better, and I watched from the sidelines—Trip and Rose wanted to ‘treat Mama’ to not having to do any work. Afterwards, Trip and I both walked Rose up to her new room, where she dressed down and got ready for bed.

  “Mama, is it okay if Mr. Trip reads me a story tonight?” It was routine, she always got a bedtime story. It was my right, my little thing that I had, but—I plucked one of her favorites from her shelf, and handed it over to a very befuddled Trip.

  “That’s perfectly okay, sweetie.”

  Trip took the book and looked at it apprehensively before that apprehension turned to determination. He flipped open the book to the front page, settled on the floor beside Rose’s bed, and started.

  “Once upon a time …”

  “You were really good with Rose today.”

  We were in bed. Rose was tucked away, snoring and snoozing. Trip and I had stripped down, too, cuddled under the plush comforter in his—in our—bed. It was peaceful.

  Trip laid his head on mine. “You think?”

  “Yeah. You were really good. I told you that she liked you. Now she knows you like her.”

  “I hope she still likes me when we tell her I’m her father.”

  “I know she’s going to love you.”

  He looked down at me, his brows furrowed. Before I knew it, he was kissing me, my face held in his hand. It was the sweetest thing he’d given me so far, by way of kisses at least. It took my breath away and I sighed against his lips before he pulled away.

  “Misha … about earlier.”

  I frowned, having known that the pleasing lull in stress was only that, a lull. I scooted to sit up and Trip did the same.

  “Whatever it is,” he said, “it’s not going to make me think of you differently. But I think—no, I know—I need to know what all of that was about. What Rose said … I need to know. For the sake of knowing how to keep our daughter out of this.”

  Our daughter …

  He really was a father, wasn’t he?

  “You know Holland didn’t let anyone at me,” I said. I had hoped to avoid this conversation with Trip, but he was right. He deserved to know, not for my sake, but for Rose’s. “We slept together, yeah, but it was never … it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t traumatizing. When Holland got into his accident and Rigger took over, though, whatever elevated status that Holland treated me with was null. It didn’t matter. Rigger made me a club girl. At first, I thought he was bluffing. Holland’s condition wasn’t looking very good, but there’s a good chance that over a little time and some treatment, he’ll pull through. Which means he’ll know about anything that Rigger does between now and then and in between. I called him on his shit and figured that I would just go ahead and move on my way, staying there as I had. I batted off the first few guys, reminding them of Holland’s rules. They respect Holland more than they fear Rigger, that’s for sure.

  “One day, Rigger got fed up with this. He brought Rose out to the shop they all worked out of, and where I was doing books and stuff like that. He told me either I did what I was there for, or Rose would learn early.”

  I drew in a breath. I could remember that day so clearly. It was a vivid image in my head, like a movie playing.

  “I can tell you what was playing on the radio as it all happened. I could tell you what cars they were working on while they went in rounds. I can’t tell you how I felt because there was nothing to feel other than the fact that I was going to do what I was told in order to protect my daughter from something much, much worse than seeing her mother like that.” I avoided looking at Trip as I drew my legs up.

  “I never regretted it. I would do it again if I had to. I just never thought that one of them would find us here again, that he would go up to Rose like that. I thought—I thought we were safe from all that. I thought I made the right choice—”

  “Misha.”

  I stopped. My heart felt like it was going to run out of my chest, like it was going to explode. I felt the same panic as I had the day it happened, and the days after where I wondered what it would take to make Rigger snap and do horrible things to my daughter, what it would take to make him hurt her, knowing that I couldn’t let him do such horrible things to her.

  But we weren’t there anymore. I was here, with Trip, and I hadn’t realized u
ntil then that I had never had the time to really process what happened.

  He held me while I cried. I sobbed. I don’t know where it came from; I hadn’t cried a day that I was with the Jackals, not even when I’d given birth to Rose, in Holland’s house with the doctor they paid off not to say anything. He held me in his arms, rocking back and forth as I was vividly reminded of all the reasons I had left the Jackals—but it was in his arms that I remembered why it was him I had come to in the first place.

  “I’m not gonna let them touch her,” he vowed. “I’m not gonna let them touch you ever again, either.” He took my face in his hands and turned it upward, looking at me. “You’re my family. The both of you. You’re my girl and she’s my daughter, and there’s not shit that’s gonna change that. Whatever it takes, Mish.”