by Bethany-Kris
My little queen.
Gian felt his wife’s fingernails dig into his skin through his suit jacket.
“Daddy,” Elena greeted politely. “How are you?”
“Well, although not as good as your husband, seeing as how he’s free today. You only get one free day to have fun after a sentence, and then it’s back to work. I’m happy to see he’s spending it with you.” Gabriel chuckled darkly. “I can’t say I ever did that for my wife when she was alive.”
Elena said nothing, but she didn’t move from Gian’s side, either. She had her sore spots, and her father was one of them. In a way, Gian thought it might do him well if he cared less, that he had a colder heart, so he could send Elena right back to her father’s cruel hands to do with as he wished.
Fortunately for Elena, Gian was not that cold, callous, or cruel.
Even if he wished he was.
No woman deserved to be beaten, used as a toy, or traded for the pleasure of men and blackmail like Elena had been for the majority of her life under Gabriel’s demands. It wasn’t exactly a secret in their family. It was not freely talked about, either.
“Sit, sit,” Gabriel demanded, waving at the table. “The food is coming soon.”
Near to the second they were all seated at a table, food was brought out from the kitchen by a chef and a waiter, served to each of them. Gian was at least grateful to get a few bites of a decent meal shoved into his face before the Camorra boss began talking again.
“Are you ever going to give that husband of yours a bambino or two?” Gabriel asked his daughter. “I might like a grandchild, too, Elena.”
Elena kept her head down as she replied, “Someday.”
Gian forced the lump of food down his throat. “Not everyone wants children.”
“All good Italian men do,” Gabriel said. “Although, considering it’s been four years since the two of you married, is it more that you don’t want any or that you can’t have any?”
Elena stiffened in her seat.
Gian kept his focus on his father-in-law. “Children are not on the conversation menu tonight.”
“Just curious. She did lose your first child, didn’t she? Shortly after the wedding. Perhaps those abortions Elena had didn’t serve her well, after all. How many was it again, cara, five?”
“Daddy, don’t start—”
“Elena, are you finished?” Gian asked, interrupting his wife from taking her father’s bait. “Eating, I mean.”
She nodded. “I am.”
“Chris is waiting outside for you.”
Elena didn’t need to be told again. She got up from the table, said a quick goodbye to her father, rubbed a hand on Gian’s shoulder as she passed, and then she was gone.
“I was only asking,” Gabriel said with a smirk. “No need to send her out. She can handle her own, Gian, I assure you.”
Gian held back from punching the man in the throat. “Yes, and then I’m the one who has to deal with her emotional backlash from handling you and your nonsense for the next week. No, thank you, Gabriel. If you’re going to throw my wife’s abortions in her face, maybe stop to consider who forced her into those, as well. What was she, sixteen the first time? The police chief, wasn’t it?”
Gabriel didn’t even blink at the accusation. “It kept me from getting tossed behind bars on a five-year sentence.”
“Shame. Those five years could have done her a world of good.”
“She’s not as innocent as you think, Gian. You’re under some impression that she didn’t understand what she was doing for all those years—she knew. She knew perfectly well.”
This was an emotional, manipulative game that Gabriel liked to play with his daughter, far too often. He couldn’t use her to do his bidding now, so he liked to mess with her in other ways. Sometimes, Gian thought his wife and father deserved one another for their despicable behavior toward each other and other people. Other times, like now, he didn’t want to sit back and watch Gabriel hurt Elena simply because he could.
“What did you really want today?” Gian asked. “What did you want by asking me here?”
“To warn you,” Gabriel said before he took a hearty sip of whiskey from a glass. “I couldn’t do that when you were in jail, and your men are already well versed on staying away from me and mine.”
“For good reason. Warn me about what, exactly?”
“I was arrested and put in for four months because of you. Or rather, my affiliation to you was enough to have them watching me, and then serving me with warrants that garnered the charges I received. I don’t care about the details, Gian, I care about my freedom.”
“Don’t we all?” Gian asked dryly. “Get to the point, so we can go our separate ways and pretend like this didn’t happen until the next time.”
“The point, you arrogant fuck, is that you’ve clearly got a rat problem somewhere. Someone, likely one of your fucking men, is feeding information to the police. And that’s not surprising, considering all the shit you stirred up after your grandfather was killed. Corrado was a good man, fit for his position. You, on the other hand, are a spoiled, cocky, ignorant—”
“If we’re going to trade insults, my demand is that you let me go first,” Gian murmured. “It’s only fair, considering. Otherwise, I’ll take a pound from you for every name you throw at me without it being deserved.”
Gabriel ground his teeth loud enough to be disturbing. “You find out which one of your useless cunts are talking to the police, or I will do it for you.”
“Who’s to say it’s not coming from your end?”
“It’s not.”
“Well—”
“Figure it out,” Gabriel interrupted, “or I will tear through your streets and do it myself.”
“Are we done?” Gian asked, standing from the table.
“Very much so. Tell my daughter to behave, Gian, though I am sure you’re keeping a proper eye on her. Women like Elena need that sort of control. She needs to be on a very short leash, because her bite is far worse than her bark, believe me.”
Gian didn’t bother to respond to that, instead turning on his heel and heading for the front of the restaurant. He was gone from the business, and into the waiting SUV, before the cameras even realized he had stepped back out.
This time, Gian sat in the front seat beside Chris.
Elena sat in the back, glaring out the window.
Chris handed over Gian’s charging cell phone, still plugged into the cigarette lighter. “Here, it’s been going nuts. Probably trying to catch up with all the shit that it’s missed out on these past few months.”
“Thanks. Drive.”
The enforcer did as he was told.
“What did he say when I was gone?” Elena asked from the back seat.
“Ignore that fucking bastard,” Gian replied.
He was more interested in checking his phone. A brand-new message scrolled across the screen, one sent within the last few minutes.
From Cara.
Twenty-eight weeks today, it read. He could see, through looking at her messages for the past several months that she had sent him a text like this for every week that he had been locked up.
Gian smiled.
Elena leaning over his shoulder quickly made his brief happiness dissipate. He turned his phone’s screen off, but he wasn’t sure if Elena had seen the messages, or not. Of course, if she had, that didn’t mean she would understand what they meant.
“I’d like to go to the mansion,” his wife said.
“Be my guest. I’m going to the penthouse.”
She sat back in the seat, unbothered and cold once more. “Good.”
Elena dropped her pretense and her mask, as she had gotten what she wanted where her father was concerned, and didn’t think she would have to worry about him again for a while.
Gian expected nothing different.
“Good God, be careful, Claud!” Daniele leaned over the railing, shaking her head. “You’re going to throw o
ut your back again, you stubborn mule.”
“I could have gotten the landlord’s son to help bring the box up,” Cara said, two steps above her aunt.
“Will you donnas shut up? Knock it off,” Claud barked down below in the stairwell. “It is one goddamn set of stairs and a crib. I can handle this.”
Daniele sighed. “I see an emergency room visit in our near future.”
“Oh, just go get the apartment door open!”
“Fine, throw your back out! I don’t care.”
Daniele cared, Cara knew.
Even as her aunt stalked down the hallway, huffing, she still looked back over her shoulder with concern to see if her husband was coming. Cara leaned over the railing to see her uncle scratching at his jaw while he stared at the crib.
“I’ll get the landlord’s son to come help,” she told her uncle.
“I had a son to help, but where is he now, Cara?”
She only stared at her uncle, unsure of how to answer that. She had no idea where Constantino was. There had been no funeral, no memorial, or anything to suggest he was dead, yet her uncle spoke like Constantino was buried somewhere, or dead in a ditch.
“So, do you want me to get you help, or not?” she asked.
“Not, girl. Not.”
“Zia was right, you are a stubborn mule.”
“She only uses that word because she’s too polite to call me an ass!” Claud shouted as Cara followed the path her aunt had taken.
“I’m not too polite, you fucking ass.”
She was grateful that her aunt and uncle had been sweet enough to pick out a nursery set for her, as once she was no longer able to hide the fact she was pregnant, they were the first people she had told. She had told her brother second.
A whole lot of questions followed, from both ends. To be fair, Tommas asked a whole lot less questions than her aunt and uncle. Questions about the father, or the fact she was just a few months off graduating. That led them into the fact the baby would come soon after, or shortly before, graduation. Then, even more questions about the baby’s father.
Cara supposed the questions were normal, given her circumstance. She chose not to answer specific ones, while she gave vague answers for others.
She rubbed a hand over her twenty-eight-week pregnancy swell to soothe the jabbing elbows of her unborn son driving into her organs. Inside her apartment, Cara found her aunt moving a few pieces of small furniture out of the hallway to make it easier to get the crib inside what had been Lea’s bedroom.
Cara finally got around to cleaning it all out.
She had a reason to now, after all.
“The rest of the nursery set will be delivered,” Daniele said, “so at least for the rest of the furniture, you won’t need someone to carry it in.”
Cara agreed. “Thanks for all of this, Zia.”
“No need to thank me, Cara. You work hard and I know you’ll be a good mother, so you deserve all the help and whatever else you can get, believe me.” Daniele went back to her work, randomly asking, “Of course, you could get lots of help by way of the baby’s father.”
Cara side-eyed her aunt, trying not to be too rude when she replied, “Zia, I am sure he will help, but right now, I am handling this on my own. And I am okay with that, as I have told you many times. The father is my business. Please respect that.”
“I worry about you, Cara, that’s all.”
“I’m perfectly fine, Zia.”
“Yes, yes, I know. You keep saying that.” Daniele waved a hand at her. “Go check on your uncle, and make sure he hasn’t had a heart attack in the stairwell.”
Cara set her purse and phone on the couch, before going to do as her aunt wanted. Just as she reached the end of the hallway, Claud was finally pulling the large crib box through the stairwell door.
“See, I managed just fine on my own,” Claud muttered.
“Huffing, puffing, and red-faced the whole way,” Cara agreed.
Her uncle shot her a dirty look, but didn’t respond.
“I think just setting it in the bedroom will be good enough for today,” she added with a smile. “No need to put you through the torture of setting the crib up today, too.”
“Who will do it for you, Cara?” Claud asked, pulling the box down the hallway toward her apartment. “Gian? His brother, perhaps?”
Cara froze, her back turned to her uncle. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing. I was thinking out loud. It was nothing.”
She slowly turned around. “It was not nothing—you specifically said a name, not that I have given you a reason to use that name, so why did you, Zio?”
Claud wiped a hand over his face, effectively removing the sweat from his brow at the same time. “Word travels in this business, between us made men, I mean. I happen to know you get occasional visits from the boss’s men, and I also know you were seen out and about with him last year before your trip to Chicago.”
“So?”
“I also know you had a visit with him in the jail a couple of months ago, Cara.”
She grinded her teeth in an effort to stay quiet.
It didn’t work.
“Zio, this is not your business,” she said firmly.
“You’re right, it isn’t. And your brother told me that, too, when I called him to chat about your current predicament.”
“You called Tommas?”
“Lower your voice,” her uncle snapped.
Cara’s back straightened at the sound of a man scolding her.
Fuck. That. Shit.
“I am not in a predicament. I am pregnant, and by whom, is my fucking business to handle how I please.”
“I know Gian Guzzi is the father, Cara. Or I have a strong enough suspicion to use his name, for good reason. And considering your reaction, I am not wrong. Tell me I am wrong.”
“And so what if he is?”
“He’s a married man!”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” she cried, throwing her hands wide. “I do know that, Claud!”
“Have you considered how difficult this road will be for you and the child?” her uncle asked quietly. “To be the mistress of a made man and the bastard boy, born to a goomah mother? Have you considered that at all?”
Cara felt the familiar prickling behind her eyes that signaled her tears were trying to fall. She held them back, and settled for hiding the trembling of her hands at her sides.
“I know I made choices that might not be what everyone else would make,” Cara replied, level-toned and stone-faced, “and I know this won’t be easy, but don’t toss those words at me just because they’re the ones everyone else wants to use. You only see the surface, and how that looks, but you don’t care about the rest. You don’t care to know the details, about me and him, about us, or why. So that also means you don’t get to tell me fuck all. Not what to do, how to handle this situation, or anything else about me, my baby, his father, or what I should do with my feelings. Take your opinion, and shove it up your—”
“Cara,” her aunt called softly from behind her.
She turned to find her aunt standing a few feet down in the hallway. No doubt, Daniele had heard every single word.
Walking past her aunt, Cara said, “Well, there you go. Now you know who. Does it make it better, Zia?”
Daniele didn’t say a thing.
She didn’t have to.
Cara knew the answer.
No, it was not better.
Cara dug into a takeout container full of noodles, as the news program on the television repeated the highlights of the day. She checked her phone, seeing a new message from Gian, one in reply to her latest update on the baby’s gestation.
I like Marcus for a name, Gian had wrote. It’s my middle name, and my grandfather’s father’s name. A family name.
Cara thought to reply, but she decided she would do that after she finished eating. She had just taken a good mouthful of noodles when a shot of Gian came across the screen.
New Guzzi Crime Boss Released, the headline read across the bottom of the screen. That wasn’t exactly news to Cara, as she had known Gian’s date of release for a good month, and had counted down the days. She also knew, through Chris’s last update, Gian might need to lay low for a few days before she would see him, it really just depended on circumstances.
That, Cara had also understood.
What she didn’t understand—or like, for that matter—was seeing a shot of Gian fresh off release, walking into what looked like a restaurant with his wife on his arm.
Then, the shot changed.
Gian stepping out of a car, moving to the other side, and then helping his wife out. She kissed his cheek, her wide-brimmed red hat that matched the color of her heels and dress, hid half of her face, but not enough.
Cara had not been able to forget what Elena looked like since the moment she had seen those wedding pictures. It was burned into her fucking retinas.
“Gian Guzzi, heir apparent and new boss to the Guzzi Crime Dynasty is free today,” the anchor said. “We were unable to question the purported Don on his release, or the investigations the police say continue to be active, as he moved directly from the jail to a restaurant, where he seemed to meet with his father-in-law, while his wife was close by. Guzzi’s father-in-law, Gabriel Canali, is another well-known gangster from an Ottawa organization, a leader of a Camorra clan, who was also recently released from jail.”
The anchor continued talking, but Cara shut the television off, and tried to focus on eating her food. She no longer had an appetite.
Cara didn’t want to be that woman—jealous because she saw Gian with his wife, and not her. She didn’t want to become irrationally angry anytime a news program mentioned something about Elena.
She had no right to feel those things.
And yet she did.
Cara quelled her irritation and useless jealousy by rolling her hands over her unborn boy’s movements. Each little kick and jab, calmed her a bit more.
There wasn’t much else she could do.
It was the loud knock on her apartment door that broke Cara from her daze. She wasn’t expecting visitors.
