Made for Him: A Mafia Baby Romance (6 page)

“
J
essica
.”

I nearly jump out of my skin when I open my apartment door to go down to my car and instead see my uncle standing in front of the doorway, wearing a leather biker vest and a frown.

“Uncle Jimmy! Why didn’t you tell me you were stopping by?”

“You haven’t been answering my phone calls,” he chastises, stepping inside of my place. I glance at my watch. I’m going to be late to meet Matteo at the restaurant he specified, and I can’t help but begrudge every second I don’t get to spend with him.

Family first, Jess,
I remind myself.

Matteo is kind of family now,
my brain counters.

I shut the apartment door with a sigh and then follow my uncle back into the open area that serves as the living room. “Do you want anything?” I ask him. “Coffee or soda or I might have some old beer…”

“Beer’s good,” he says. “Something domestic, none of that ‘craft brew’ crap, though.”

I grin as I fish out an abandoned Bud Light bottle from the back of my fridge. “The craft brew crap is normally the only thing I drink, so you’re lucky Nate left some of his nasty beer here before we broke up.”

I bring it over to Jim, who cracks it open and narrows his eyes at me. “You forgiven that boy yet?”

I sigh and flop down in an armchair across from where he stands. He doesn’t sit though, starting to pace around instead. “I’m not going to date Nate again, Jim. Let it go.”

“It would make life easier if you’d just take him back of your own free will,” he mutters, taking a sip of his beer, and trailing his hand along the bar-top counter that edges my kitchen.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind,” he says. “Why haven’t you been returning my calls? I’ve been worried about you. The city is—”

“—Rough right now, I know. But don’t you read the news? All the crazy homicides that have happened this year have been drug-related, the police think. And I don’t do drugs. So.” I shrug.

It occurs to me as I’m saying this that the father of my baby does engage in dealing drugs, however, but I don’t mention this to Jim.

My uncle pauses his pacing momentarily and stands at the counter, his back to me. “It’s dangerous for everyone,” he answers slowly. “And it’s about who you know, Jessica. Not what you do.”

Just as I’m about to fire back a retort about how I don’t know anyone dangerous—Matteo aside—Jim turns to me with an unreadable face. “Do you care to explain this to me?”

In his hand, he holds the plastic container of prenatal vitamins. I had left them out on my counter.

Shit.

For the briefest second, I consider lying. But then I stop myself. What will that help? Especially when the truth will be evident enough in another month when I start showing.

So I swallow my discomfort and confess the truth. “I’m pregnant, Uncle Jimmy. About two and a half months along.”

There’s a brief flash of love and concern, but just as my chest starts to swell with happiness that he’s not angry or upset, the concern vanishes, replaced by frustration.

“Dammit, Jessi,” he swears, calling me by my childhood nickname. “And is there any chance it’s Nate’s?”

Jesus, when will he stop being so obsessed with Nate? “It’s not his,” I say irritably. “We didn’t have any sex at all the month we broke up.”

He rubs a hand over his graying beard, frowning. “This is bad, Jessica.”

I’m hurt. “Well, it’s not great, given that I’m still young and not married, but God, I thought you’d be at least a little supportive.”

His face softens. “I’m not trying to bring you down, honey, but there are bigger things going on right now. I promised Nate…”

“Promised Nate what?”

“I promised him
you
, Jessi.”

This is so outside of my experience that I have trouble processing what he’s saying. “This isn’t
Sarah, Plain and Tall
,” I say, my voice rising in anger, “I’m not a mail order bride. You can’t promise me to people! And what does that even mean?”

He rubs his beard again. “It’s complicated.”

I throw up my hands. “Let me uncomplicate it for you! I’m not going to go back to a man who cheated on me just because you made a promise that you had no right to make. Got it?”

“He wants you,” my uncle implores. “Even after you left him, he still wants you back. And I said he could have you, in exchange for certain…business favors he’s done for me.”

“I don’t care what he said or what you said,” I tell him coldly. “I’m not going to get my heart broken again. Not for him. And besides, I’m dating someone else.”

“You are?” my uncle seems shocked. “But you’re pregnant!”

I roll my eyes. “It’s the father of the baby. It’s not unheard of for people to date in that circumstance.”

A rap at the door interrupts our conversation. I walk over to the peephole and see Matteo on the other side of the door, looking mouth-watering in a dark suit with a bright blue tie.

“What do you know,” I tell my uncle. “You’ll get to meet him now.” And then I open the door.

Matteo steps in and crushes me to his chest. His stubble scrapes against my face as he asks, low in my ear, “Where were you? You didn’t meet me at the restaurant and I was worried…” he trails off, seeing my uncle.

And then he slowly lets me go. A cold silence wafts between the two men; a cold, scary silence.

“
Moretti
,” my uncle seethes, taking a step forward.

Matteo cuts in front of me, pushing me behind him as if to protect me. “Jimmy.”

“You two know each other?” I ask, confused.

“You could say that,” Matteo says, his tone polite even as I can feel his body practically vibrate with violence.

“Jessica, step away from that man, honey. He’s dangerous and he’ll hurt you.”

“Matteo?” I push around my lover’s arm to be able to look at my uncle’s face. “But he’s the guy I was telling you about. The guy I’m seeing.”

“He’s your baby’s father?” Jimmy couldn’t look more disgusted than if he’d just stepped on dog shit. Except there was also an undercurrent of horror in his words, like he was genuinely disturbed…maybe even frightened.

“Yes, Uncle Jimmy,” I say, trying to dissolve whatever tension sprung up between them. “I didn’t know you two knew each other or anything. We met at a bar two months ago, and then I found out I was pregnant and then we started dating. It was unplanned, but Matteo is a great guy, and I’m happy right now.”

There. Cards on the table. He wouldn’t dare keep fussing about Matteo after I told him I was happy.

Except then his features shift, distort with some understanding I don’t share. His lips curl under his long biker beard with a snarl.

“
You
,” he breathes at Matteo.

“Me,” Matteo agrees. His hand slides around my waist, yanking me to his side possessively. “And Jessica, your precious niece, pregnant with my child. Pregnant and in love with me.”

I’m still trying to absorb the fact that these two men—the most important in my life right now—know each other. Not just know each other, but have some sort of long-standing animosity toward each other. But something about Matteo’s words rub me the wrong way, activate alarm bells in my mind. I pull away from him, missing his warmth but unable to stand his nearness while I’m so confused.

Matteo keeps facing my uncle, his handsome features creased into a mask of pure, determined hatred. “You made it all too easy, Jimmy. I told you not to leave your assets unprotected—did you really think I meant that shit junkyard you call a shop?”

You made it all too easy.

Assets unprotected.

“I suppose I never assumed you’d stoop this low,” Jimmy says, his shoulders tight with restrained fury.

“Look around us. Are there any dead bodies? Any tortured soldiers? And homes burned? Smart men don’t need to resort to such crass measures as long as they know their enemy’s true weakness. Which was Jessica.”

I swallow back the nausea climbing up my throat—nausea I’m pretty sure has nothing to do with the pregnancy.

“Matteo,” I whisper. And when he turns his head to look at me, those blue eyes as cold as glacier ice, I realize that all the suspicions his words created in me were right. “Am I…are you
using
me to get at my uncle?”

Matteo’s jaw works, as if he’s uncomfortable. “Remember what I told you during our first weekend together? About the men who have control of this city? Your uncle is their leader.”

I scoff, the reaction immediate. “Uncle Jimmy?” I ask disbelievingly. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less trade meth and sex slaves.”

This, of course, would be the time for Jimmy to chime in and validate what I’ve just said, to reassure me that he is still the Jimmy I’ve known since I was a baby, the Jimmy who made sure my college tuition was paid and that I always had gas in my tank.

But Jimmy stays silent, and in that silence, the admission of truth is as clear as a bell ringing. I swivel to look at him, stunned. “Is this true?” I ask in a trembling voice.

Jimmy tugs on his beard and refuses to meet my eyes for a minute. But eventually he raises his eyes to mine and says, “Yes, Jessi. The boys and I…we do some stuff I haven’t told you about yet. I was waiting until you were older, until you and Nate were married. I didn’t want you to be on the outside when I told you, when I explained everything to you. I wanted you close, so you could see and understand for yourself.”

My mind flashes with a thousand connecting points of light as the pieces assemble into place. The long road trips with the boys, the guns around the shop, his constant worry about the city being rough…I want to bark out a harsh laugh. Of course he’s worried—the city is dangerous for me because of
him
. Because of his lies.

Oh God, and the things Matteo said that they did—selling meth and guns and
children.
I clap a hand over my mouth and stagger backwards to a chair where I sit, not seeing anything.

“Why don’t you tell her how you sold her to Nate as advance on payment for all the work he’s done for you?” Matteo coaxes in a cold, silky voice. “Why don’t you tell her how her parents really died?”

My head snaps up, my heart pounding and my lips numb. “What?”

Jimmy is furious, a leather-bound hulk of grizzled, old anger. Matteo is completely composed, his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, his posture relaxed. “Tell her,” Matteo urges. “I’ll wait.”

“You go first,” Jimmy spits. “How long have you been stalking her, waiting to make your move?”

Matteo’s lips curl cruelly. “You mean, waiting to
fuck
her?”

My uncle blanches.

“Because I did, Jimmy, I fucked her a lot. Five times that first night, and I can’t count how many times since then. You want to keep me out of this city? You can’t even keep me out of your niece’s pussy.”

“Stop it!” I cry, leaping to my feet. “I can’t take any more. Both of you leave.” Tears are running down my face, fast and hot. My mind races, but my voice is rock steady and so is my finger when I point at the door. “Leave. Now.”

“I’m not leaving you alone with him,” Jimmy warns me.

“And you think I’d let the mother of my child be alone with
you
?” Matteo retorts, the first true flash of anger hot in his voice.

“Do you think,” I say, my voice still firm even though panic and anger and betrayal are shredding through me, “that I want to be alone with either one of you?”

They both turn and stare at me. “You,” I say to my uncle, “sold me to Nate? Like one of your sex slaves?”

“No!” Jimmy protests. “It’s not like that at all!”

“And you,” I turn to Matteo and this is where my voice starts quavering, “you followed me? You dated me just to get to my uncle? I was only part of your plan to take over the city?”

“Jessica,” he answers in a low voice, which, dammit, even now goes straight to my heart, straight to my cunt. “You aren’t ‘only’ anything. Yes, at first I wanted you because of who you are. But after these last eight weeks, do you really think that’s all you still are to me? Do you think that I don’t care about who you are as a person? About our baby? My child?”

God, I want to believe him. His eyes are blazing blue for me, completely thawed from earlier, and if we were alone, he would prove every single one of his words to me. Multiple times. In multiple positions.

My heart pounds against my ribcage,
believe him believe him believe him
, because I am falling in love with him and the thought that I fell for someone who sees me only as a pawn in his criminal empire threatens to gut me.

But my brain ignores my heart, sifting through his words, sifting through all the new information, carefully analyzing the situation like it’s a new amicus brief at work.

Because of who you are.

Our baby.

My child.

My brain sees the truth half a second before my heart feels it, and it’s so horrifying that my voice cracks when I speak the words. “Matteo, did you…
intentionally…
get me pregnant?”

Matteo doesn’t answer, but his throat bobs up and down, like he’s swallowing the words he wants to say.

And then, slowly, he nods.

I sink back down onto the chair. “Go away,” I whisper. “Both of you go.”

“Jessica—”

I don’t know which one of them said it, the roaring of the blood in my ears is so loud, and I’m not sure whom I’m aiming at when I seize the decorative bowl from my coffee table and hurl it in their direction with a scream, but when I look up, I’m alone. Alone with a shattered bowl, a throat raw from screaming, and a baby conceived to end a war. A baby I didn’t ask for, a baby created to hurt my family.

A baby I already love and will have to raise alone.

W
hatever surge
of kindness or anger motivated the men to leave, I don’t know, but I do know it won’t last. Matteo won’t let me go, not with his child inside me, and there’s no way Jimmy will let Matteo win by having control over me. I bet they each already have someone watching my apartment, making sure that opposite faction won’t make a move on me.

Bikers versus Mafia.

How has this become my life?

And how did I stay blind to who my uncle was for so long? I haven’t forgotten what Matteo said
—why don’t you tell her how her parents really died—
but there’s no way in hell I can even begin to unpack that statement. The idea that there was something more to their deaths, something that Jimmy knew…something that Jimmy was involved with…it tears a hole in a part of me that’s already torn wide open, and I can’t right now. Not while I need to figure out my next steps.

I stand up, wipe the tears from my face, and walk over to my phone. If I’m going to go someplace Matteo and my uncle can’t find me, then I can’t come into work. So I call my boss, grateful for whatever emotional numbness allows me to lie and tell her I’m having trouble with my pregnancy and I’ll need to be on bedrest. We hammer out a rough arrangement for me to cut down to half-time and to work that half remotely, and then I hang up, not feeling triumphant necessarily, but satisfied that I was able to accomplish something right now.

He lied to you.

He used you.

My hand drops to my stomach, and I bite my lip hard to keep from crying again. It’s not too late in the pregnancy to make hard decisions, but I know that I’m already decided. Fuck Matteo and fuck my uncle and fuck territory wars—this baby is the one thing of my own that I can choose, and I refuse to let their bullshit affect my choice. What do I—Jessica Simmons—want? What would I want if Matteo had been nothing more than a one night stand? What would I want if my life was still the calm ocean of corporate law and cocktail parties it used to be?

I would want the baby.

Even though there’s no one around to hear or witness me, I say it aloud. “I want this baby. No matter what.”

And that’s that.

I go into my bedroom, take a calculated sweep of the room, and start packing. Clothes, toiletries, laptop. Prenatal vitamins and the new bras I bought for my swollen breasts. With a small twist in my throat, I toss in the Preggy Pops Matteo bought me, along with a small leather pair of booties embroidered with a large silver
M
at the toes.

They’re Matteo’s baby booties from his own infancy, handcrafted in Italy for the occasion of his birth. He gave them to me last week over a candlelight dinner, and then he’d carried me to bed, where he used those candles to drip teasing sizzles of wax all over my breasts and stomach until I was begging for him to fuck me. Which he did repeatedly.

I should leave them behind, as a gesture to myself that I don’t need Matteo going forward, but the dimple in his cheek when I’d squealed over them…the glow in his eyes as he traced all of his promises for the future on my back with his lips…

I can’t leave them behind, not yet. And they are beautiful little shoes.

Bag packed, I give my apartment a final once over. Lights off, curtains drawn, appliances unplugged. I have everything I need, and I can’t put it off any longer. I have to find a place to go and manage to get there without being seen. Which will be a challenge, underscored by the text my phone buzzes with that very second:

I’m getting the boys and we’re coming back to get you. Don’t worry, honey, we’re going to keep you safe from Moretti and his men.

Uncle Jimmy. My stomach churns in disgust. I wonder if Nate is with them, that asshole. I wonder if Uncle Jimmy is dumb enough to think I’d willingly come with him after all I’d learned today.

Okay, I’ll be waiting here for you
,
I lie. The longer I can throw him off my plan of running away, the better.

I scoop my car keys off my counter and walk out the door, locking it behind me, and then take the elevator down to the parking garage, where my little gray Prius waits. I keep my eyes sharp as I walk past the rows of cars, looking for anything unfamiliar, for any figures lingering in the shadows.

There’s nothing. No one.

I don’t allow myself to breathe a sigh of relief until I get to my car and check underneath and inside of it. And once I see that it’s empty, that there’s no biker or Mafia soldier lying underneath it, I finally exhale. Step one accomplished. Even though I know it can’t be as easy as me driving out of town, getting to my car unhindered felt like the hardest part.

I toss my bag in the trunk, slam it shut and then walk to the driver’s side door, and that’s when the two massive hands slam into the car on either side of me.

I startle, almost dropping my keys, turning into the wall of sleek muscle and custom suit that is Matteo Moretti.

“Did you really think I was going to let you walk away from me?” he breathes, and it takes no thought at all for me to fist my car key and bring it up to his neck.

“Let me go,” I say tightly. “Or I will shove this into your throat.”

He leans closer, nothing but blue eyes and the smell of leather and cologne. My entire body trembles, betraying me, overwhelmed with sense memories of him. “You know that I would let you,” he says. “And I wouldn’t raise a hand to stop you. That’s how much I fucking care about you.”

I press the key in deeper, watching it bite into the firm flesh of his throat. He lets me, even when the dent in his skin is so deep that I know I’ll leave a massive bruise, that I’ll soon draw blood. He lets me, his only response is dropping his mouth to mine and meeting my lips with a soft, coaxing kiss.

His lips are gentle and warm, nothing to match his stalking me through the garage or the blunt metal tip currently digging into his neck, and then I’m kissing him back, opening my mouth to his and letting him inside. Our tongues slide together, our breath tangles, and we’re panting in between kisses, driven by desperate anger and lust.

With that key still pressed to his neck, he steps forward into me, the steel rod of his erection unmistakable and undeniable, and I grind against him, my swelling clit finding delicious resistance against his hard thigh, which he wedges between my legs for me to ride as we kiss. And ride it I do, grinding down on him as he ravages my mouth, growling words I can barely catch in both Italian and English,
carissima
and
mine
and
kiss me, fucking kiss me.

Gasping for air, I drop my head back against my car. “Matteo,” I say weakly, his mouth still ghosting over mine, my key still in his neck.

“Yes?” he rasps.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Kissing you?”

“Yes.”

“Because I want to. Can’t you feel how much I want to?”

I can. I can feel it. All the long, hot inches of how much he wants to kiss me.

“But you don’t have to pretend any more,” I say, turning my face away. “I know the truth. No more lies.”

Firm fingers find my chin and turn my gaze up to his. “I never had to pretend. Not once. I didn’t have to pretend when I took a gorgeous blonde back to her place. Then, after I fucked you, after I saw your bookshelf, I knew I’d never have to pretend to want you, ever. Just because I knew you were the woman I needed doesn’t mean that what happened between us wasn’t real. Doesn’t mean that I didn’t fall in love with you.”

My breath stutters in my chest. “What?”

“You have to know by now,” he says, his eyes searing into mine. “You must have realized that I’ve fallen in love with you.”

I stab the key deeper into his neck, and he sucks in a pained breath but makes no move to stop me.

“Don’t lie to me!” I say, my eyes burning with fresh tears. “Just stop it!”

“I won’t lie,” he says intensely. “You want every ugly truth? Is that what you need so you can believe me about how I feel? Then I’ll give it to you. I’ve had my people watch you for months. I’ve tracked your credit card purchases, your social media posts. I knew when you bought wine and chocolate and tampons, and I knew the moment you unfollowed and unfriended your now ex-boyfriend. I hoped I’d get you pregnant—I prayed for it, lit fucking candles in church for it—but I would have started a relationship with you regardless. I wanted to have the final weapon to end this war without further bloodshed, but what I found in your bed was so much better. Yeah, I got hard thinking about coming inside of you, impregnating you. And yes, I get hard for you now just knowing that you’re carrying my child. But if you think that I don’t get hard just because you’re
you
, then you’re fucking wrong. You’re in my head all the time. I can’t think about anything else besides you. All I want, all I crave, every day,
all day
, is making you mine forever. Having you in my bed every night, waking up to you every morning. So stab me with your key, drive away from me, turn me into the police—I don’t care as long as you know the whole truth. That no matter how this started, it ends with me loving you.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Matteo’s pulse pounds in his throat, right next to the metal tip of my key, and his eyes search mine with breathtaking clarity. I can see right into their depths, read the honesty in every syllable, every breath.

He’s telling the truth.

And the truth is terrible and wonderful all at once.

His thigh presses against me with renewed pressure and my clit flares back to needy life, begging me to rub against him. And then the hand that’s not holding the key reaches between us and I unfasten his belt with one hand, fumble with his zipper.

He doesn’t help, his expression tight and his eyes blazing with lust, and when I finally free his massive erection from his pants, he lets out the kind of half grunt, half groan that erases all other doubts from my mind.

One of his large hands drops to my hip, sliding down to my ass and upper thigh, and then he hikes my leg up to his waist. I’m wearing a short dress—a fluttering red number that I wanted to wear one last time before the baby started showing—and as he presses against me, with my leg around his waist, I can feel the hot steel of his cock through the fabric of my thong.

His finger hooks the fabric aside, and I whimper as the cool air of the dark garage hits my bare pussy.

But he pauses before he does anything else. He meets my eyes again. “Princess?”

He’s asking me if I’m okay. He’s asking me if I really want to do this.

“Fuck me,” I manage. “Fuck me hard. But I’m still mad at you. I still want to hate you.”

He grins, his dimple deep and adorable. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

Without further preamble, he fists himself and seeks out my entrance, the tip of his cock like a searing brand through my slick folds. The wide crown nudges me once, twice, and then finally sinks inside, a sensation I didn’t know I was dying without until I feel it again.

I move to lower the key from his neck, but he reaches up to stop me. “No,” he growls. “Keep it there. I like being at your mercy. I like feeling your anger.”

So I keep it there, my fist and my key at his throat as he fucks me against my car, and I give him all of my anger, all of my betrayal, all of my pain. I bite his chest through his shirt, scratch at his neck with my free hand, move my hips so hard against his that a few times he has to close his eyes and clench his jaw to keep from coming too fast, too soon.

I tell him everything, every last angry word and furious epithet that comes to mind, because I
am
furious, I
am
angry, and I’ll never forgive him for using me like this, ever. I’ll never forgive him for stalking me, for hunting me, for planting his seed inside me. I’ll never forgive him for dragging me into a war I want nothing to do with; I’ll never forgive him for that dimple or those sinfully blue eyes; I’ll never, ever, ever forgive him for every amazing moment we spent together, both in bed and out of it.

I’ll never forgive him for making me fall in love.

I tell him all of this, hissing and panting in his ear, and it’s as if every word of mine sends a direct current of electricity through his body. His hand grows tighter and tighter around my thigh and his thrusts grow from long, rolling movements into short, vicious stabs, until my words run out and all that’s left are my cries of pleasure, echoing through the parking garage.

I can feel the Prius rocking with me every time Matteo slams into my cunt, and the hand braced by my shoulder is slowly curling into a claw as he loses more and more control, as he winds tighter and tighter.

“I’m going to come inside you,” he says, his voice a harsh grate of need in my ear, “and you’re going to love it. Just like you loved it the night I got you pregnant.”

“I’ll never forgive you if you come before I do,” I hiss, and he chuckles, low and menacing.

“Such a litany of things you’ll never forgive me for. I wonder how you can remember them all. But you won’t need to remember this one, because it’s not going to happen.” And then he pushes me harder against the car, pinning me against the car door and making it so that my other foot can barely touch the floor. Pinned like this, held in place only by his hand under my ass and the grinding pressure of his pelvis, the friction is unbelievable, rough and fierce and intense, and it only takes a few more of his grinding thrusts before my climax is imminent, a string of firecrackers merely waiting for a match.

And he gives me the match, seizing my jaw in his hand and capturing my mouth with a soul-stealing kiss, the kind of kiss that is so deep and needy that it feels like fucking, like fucking with tongues. Something warm touches my fingertip as his mouth continues to ravish mine, and when I pull back with wide eyes and swollen lips, I see that it’s a small drop of blood from where my key started to puncture the skin of his neck.

He’d forced himself into the key, made himself bleed, just so he could kiss me.

And that thought is all it takes, sending my core muscles contracting and then exploding outwards, my vagina fluttering around his cock, my whole body shaking against the car as I come and come and come, his blood on my fingers and his body hard and demanding against mine.