Phantom's Baby: A Mafia Secret Baby Romance (Mob City Book 3) (18 page)

V
al's taken
Kitty out for a daddy / daughter day.

I just want to repeat that, because I'm giggling like a fucking schoolgirl.

Val's taken Kitty out for a daddy / daughter day!

Believe me when I say I love my kid. And Kitty's the best damn daughter that anyone could ask for. She never argues back, she never cries, whines or moans. She's an angel, and I'm not just saying that because I gave birth to her. But you can also believe me when I tell you that sometimes, just sometimes, a mom needs a break. It's a goddamn hard job, because even when everything's going absolutely right, it's only a heartbeat away from going completely wrong.

If only I'd known how true that was.

Ever since Val forced me to pull that trigger, I'd felt like a whole new woman. It felt like the kind of moment where I turned the corner – where instead of the world just throwing shit at me, and me not being able to do a damn thing about it, now I'm tossing it back.

"Geez, Cara," I muttered. "Baby mama drama, much?"

But still, it was true. Until you've walked a mile in a girl's heels, you can't know what she's been through. And mine were the uncomfortable, blistery type, too. Pulling the trigger felt like a fork in the road, where I kicked those damn feet prisons off and bravely strode my own path forward.

My phone chirruped a notification.

Of course, it had to ruin my day.

I stared at the small black rectangle and a sense of dread filled my stomach. I spoke in a hiss as every last drop of air escaped from my lungs.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Right in the center of the screen, covering Kitty's face, was a short line of text:
one new video message
. And right by it, a picture of a demon's face. It was Russell. In two seconds, every fifty foot tall wall of hurt, self-loathing and recrimination that dad's abuse had built in my mind, came soaring right back up. One tiny notification undid all the good work Val had spent two slow, careful weeks building.

"Just delete it," I muttered, giving voice to my subconscious mind. I should have listened to it, but of course I didn't. I couldn't. It's hard to explain the kind of damage that a parent can do to a kid. You know you're fucked up when every fiber in your body is screaming at you not to pull the string, and you do it anyway, and all you’ve built tumbles down the hill, gathering pace until it falls into a trash heap.

That's what I did.

I pulled the string, and Russell's face appeared on screen. It hung there for a second as the phone's slow processor struggled to decompress it, and then came into full focus. I blanched. It barely seemed like the same person I'd left just a short couple of weeks before. The Russell I remembered had the plump, yellowed skin of the habitual alcoholic. This Russell's face was tissue paper crumpled, and a sickly gray.

This Russell ran his hand through sweaty, thinning hair before he spoke. "Cara," he rasped, his voice but a shadow of the terrifying boom that I remembered – the voice that had ruled my life with fear for so many years. He seemed a broken man.

"I'm sorry, girl," this Russell said.

I shivered, and a wave of sickness rose in my throat.

Girl! You've no right to call me girl. Not after the way you treated me, not after the things you did to me
.

My hand hovered over the screen, ready to kill the message. I was cold with fear, and bristling with hatred. I should have killed it. I shouldn't have let this monster say so much as a word to me.

Let alone give him a chance to ruin my life –

again.

"The way I treated you was unforgivable. I want you to know I'm not asking for it, for forgiveness. I know I don't deserve it."

He paused. There was something off about the way he was speaking. It was jerky, almost forced. It was like he was an actor who didn't know his lines, and was pushing himself to remember.

"I haven't had a drink for a week now," he said. The image of his face shivered, and I realized his hand must have been shaking uncontrollably. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen him sober. Hell, maybe I never had. The way I pictured Russell, dad, was with a bottle in one hand and a belt in the other.

Maybe that's it
, I thought.
He's sober, and doesn't goddamn remember how to talk to another human being without beating them to a pulp
.

"You leaving," he croaked, "changed everything."

Good
, I thought with a mean streak of vindictiveness I didn't know I possessed. I was just preparing to kill the message and turf Russell from the perfect little life I was building myself when he uttered the fateful words.

"I know I can't make it up to you," he said. "But there are things I need to tell you; about mom."

I didn't have any other choice.

* * *

T
he café was
in a quiet part of town, not far from Val's apartment at Drummond Tower. I figured I wanted to meet on home territory, or close enough that it made no difference. There was no chance I was letting him come to the apartment. No way. I expected to see one of Val's men guarding the door, but he wasn't there.

So I was here, alone.

"In and out, Cara," I muttered to myself, hiding out of sight behind a neatly parked black truck with tinted windows. "No letting him inside your head. He's an addict. He probably just wants money or something."

The second he'd mentioned mom, I knew I needed to see him. I had questions that needed answers, and Russell was the only man living I could ask. Even so, I knew I was being stupid. I reached into my handbag and tapped the Beretta 87 for good luck. It was loaded, and even though it was only a twenty-two caliber, I figured it should at least slow a man down.

I straightened my dress and stepped into the café. A bell attached to the door tinkled to announce my arrival. Strangely, no one stood behind the counter. The room only held a man in an old, tattered overcoat, shivering by the far wall and nursing an empty coffee cup.

Russell.

I shivered. Even looking at the man was enough to make my whole body tremble with fear. But I glanced at the loaded gun – my strength – and it did the job. It reminded me of the girl I was becoming, not the girl I was.

You turned a corner, girl
, I reassured myself.
He's got nothing on you now
.

"Cara."

He half-rose from his chair to greet me, but the arm pushing him up trembled. His voice was croaky, like an old smoker's, and his gray skin glistened with a faint sheen of sweat. I guessed he was probably still detoxing. Reversing forty years of alcohol abuse is more than a week's work; more than a month's.

"Russell." My voice was hard and uncompromising. I was glad. I needed Russell to know that I wasn't going to be cowed by him. "Why am I here?"

He pointed at the seat opposite. "Won't you sit?"

"I'm not staying."

His head sagged to his chest. "That's fair; I deserve it."

"You do."

Russell sank back and slumped into his seat. He looked like the shadow of the man who had tormented me for so many years. He glanced out of the window nervously. I watched his eyes. They were an addict's eyes. They never stopped moving; were always searching for something else; looking for the next drink; even now.

He didn't break the silence. I did.

"I read the letter, Russell."

He flinched as I said his name. He hated me calling him that. He used to anyway. It looked like he still did. "What letter?"

"Mom's suicide note," I said coldly.

Russell froze. I'd call him Russell to my dying day, even in the peace and quiet of my own head. That was one thing he couldn't take away from me.

"You never read it," I continued, watching as his face flinched under my verbal assault.

"You never read it, and you let me think she was still alive. All those years I bit my pillow and silently cried myself to sleep, asking myself why she left. Why she didn't love me, and you knew." My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it. It made me sound weak, and I was anything but. That I was here at all was proof of that. The old Cara – the one beaten down by years of abuse – she'd never have had the balls to do what I was doing.

But that was the old Cara.

This Cara pulled the trigger.

This Cara had a Beretta 87 in her purse.

And this Cara would use it.

Russell clenched hands that went white with effort and looked knotted with arthritis. He squeezed and loosened, and his knuckles cracked one by one. I shuddered. I wasn't scared of him, not anymore. He was like an old war criminal. Hidden for years and now splashed on the front page of every newspaper in America, but now old, wizened and pathetic.

Yet still evil.

He coughed as he spoke. "How dare you talk to me like that, young lady. I'm still your father, and you'll respect –"

I laughed a cold, bitter cackle. I realized that I shouldn't have bothered coming here. He had nothing for me. He was still the same hard bastard he'd always been, and he was too old to change. A nagging voice in the back of my mind asked me why he'd called me down here in the first place. What the hell had he had to say that was so damn important?

And why's he sober?

But I ignored it. I was too far gone, the anger running too freely to hold it back. And after all those years, I felt I deserved it. Here was my one chance not to turn the other cheek; my one chance to return even a thousandth of the pain that he had rained down upon me.

"You're no such thing," I growled.

Without realizing it, my hand had crept into the bag by my side, and I had to make a conscious effort to uncouple my fingers from the weapon.

"Because no father," I hissed, "would treat a young girl the way you treated me; and you can believe that as sure as the sky is blue!"

Russell laughed a dull, soulless wheeze that affected me like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. "Oh, bitch, you better believe I'm still your father. You can run away with some man and that don't change a damn thing."

Something rattled shut in the background; a window shutter, maybe, or an outside door. My subconscious heard it, processed it and ignored it.

"Then why the hell did you drag me down here?" I spat back. "What's your problem? Was two decades not long enough to do your worst? What do you get out of this, anyway?"

He stared at me and uttered perhaps the only honest word that had ever passed his lips; he didn't even look ashamed doing it.

"Drink."

My mouth went dry as a bone. "What? What the hell are you talking about?"

Russell's teeth pulled back into what I assumed was a smile, but looked like an animal’s snarl. "Oh, baby. You’re in a whole heap of trouble, now."

I backed into the chair I’d ignored. It fell back behind me and clattered against the floor. I barely noticed it. My mind kicked into overdrive while my body was still reacting; the black truck with tinted windows; the empty café; the sound of the door banging shut.

"You stupid, stupid girl," I moaned, spinning around and searching for any sign of trouble. Then I bolted.

I didn't need to be a goddamn spy to realize that Russell had sold me out. That the only reason he cleaned himself up enough to stay off the drink was the promise of more.

So as I ran, I scrabbled in the inside of my tiny handbag for the gun, Val's words echoing in my head: "never point your gun at something you're not prepared to kill."

Believe me, Val, I'm prepared
.

I didn't bother shouting back angered curses at Russell for betraying me. There was no point. In an hour’s time, when his paymaster provided the goods, he'd be slumped in an alcoholic coma. I doubted he'd remember any of this.

I burst through the café door, snatching a look back over my shoulder.

"Shit," I moaned. I had a pursuer. What little I saw told me that he was a stocky guy. All dressed in black, up to a matching cap and burly enough to swat me aside like I might a fly. I knew enough to know that falling into his clutches would put me into a very bad situation indeed.

I picked up the pace. I sprinted towards the sidewalk, and as I ran, I saw salvation in the shape of a barely moving black limo. My chaser was closing on me fast, and I knew there was no chance I'd be able to outrun him. Not in these shoes. So I did the only thing I could think of. I threw myself in front of the car.

It screeched gently to a halt, and I collapsed onto the hood, my heart exploding in my ears. "Please," I begged in a ragged voice, not knowing if anyone was listening but knowing I had to try. "A man's chasing me. Please help me."

A window hissed down, and as I half-fell, half-ran towards the opening I snuck a glance in the direction of the café, eyes desperately searching for the man in black. I didn't expect what I saw. He had stopped dead, ten yards away, his hand resting on the holster that lay strapped to his hip –

just watching.

A cold chill of foreboding gripped my stomach. I knew even then that I was a dead woman walking. Whatever lay inside the limousine, it couldn't be good. And yet it was my only choice. I approached the open window with feet like lead.