Phantom's Baby: A Mafia Secret Baby Romance (Mob City Book 3) (34 page)

R
oman

I didn't answer. Not at first. Not for a long time. Not until I parked the car in a dark, fenced-off alleyway, tossed a mildewed blue tarpaulin over it and indicated for Ellie to follow me back into the safe house. My home. The only place that linked me to this city, a house without possessions, a house without memories, the closest thing to a home that I'd ever had, and simultaneously the furthest away.

She didn't resist. Her eyes followed me, wary as a beaten dog. I couldn't blame her. I wouldn't trust me, either. Besides, it wasn't like she had a whole lot of choice. This deep in the industrial district, nobody would hear her scream. Not that I had any plans of doing anything to hurt her. I'd seen enough pain and caused enough suffering to last a lifetime, and to know that if I keep doing it, my soul will burn, if my mind doesn't fracture first. I pulled up a section of chain-link fencing, just high enough to duck underneath, and waved my hand. Ellie passed through, and I couldn't keep my eyes off her perky ass –.

Not now
, I thought, shaking my head in disgust at myself. Not while I needed to convince her that I wasn't the worst person who'd ever walked the earth, not while her life hinged on whether or not she accepted my help. Not while our child's future was on the line…

I gulped, the enormity of my task becoming ever more apparent, and ever more unmanageable. I had no idea how I was going to break the news to her, or how she would take it. I couldn't imagine it going well. After all, I'd misled her, lied to her, lived a lie even as I saved her life.

Baby steps…

I almost snorted with laughter at my brain's entirely accidental, and entirely inappropriate pun. I covered my humor up as best I could, forcing a steely calm over my facial muscles.

I gestured at the couch, but Ellie declined my offer as politely as anyone could, with a single, negative shake of the head. I shrugged.
Fair enough
. The fact that she was listening to me in the first place was more than I had expected, and more than I deserved, especially after tackling her against a concrete pillar.

I suspected that if she found it in her heart to forgive me, I'd be living
that one
down for a long time. But thoughts like that were skipping way ahead of myself. I slumped back onto the forgiving piece of furniture and kneaded my eyelids, trying to figure out how to put into words what I knew I needed to say. I had to give the most convincing speech of my life, but the truth was, I knew I was no wordsmith. Words, with all their double, forked meanings and unanticipated ways of biting you in the ass – they aren't my thing. I'm a man of action, not persuasion.

Shut up and say something!

"I have a brother," I said. "Had a brother, I should say. It's still hard, even now. I wake up sometimes and the first thing I think of is telling him what happened in my dream." Ellie didn't say a word, stayed perfectly still, staring at me. I thought I saw her eyes soften, if only a fraction, but perhaps I imagined it. Perhaps I was just seeing what I wanted to see. A man in my line of work has to be like a rock, buffeted every day by guilt and conscience and fear of judgment in the after.

But for a long time, it was easy to shut all of that out. Easy to ignore it, to hide from it, to drink and smoke and fuck the guilt away. Maybe there comes a time when that doesn't work anymore. Maybe I had reached my line in the sand. Or maybe I'd needed someone to draw that line for me.

Maybe that person was Ellie.

I carried on, fighting back hot, angry tears that were threatening to prickle the corners of my eyes. "We were the same age. Same height. Same eye color. Same everything. We did everything together. My mother died, and my
father
," I spat the word out, "died to me. He was an animal. No, not even an animal, because animals aren't cruel, they just hunt to survive."
A bit like myself
.

"What happened?" Ellie asked, her voice barely audible.

I'd never told anyone any of this before. Not the disinterested state social workers back in Russia, who only cared enough to pick up their paycheck. Not since the death of my brother, and never to a lover. But that's not what Ellie was to me. Not now, anyway. She was more, and less all at once. The words began to spill out, heedless of the dam that had held them back for so many years.

"He was an angry man before mama died. But he kept a lid on things, drank himself to sleep in an armchair every night. He didn't work. Of course he didn't work. But she kept him quiet. Of course, everything changed when she passed."

I paused, a succession of painful memories flashing across the backs of my eyelids. Mama kissing us to sleep at night. Taking us to school. Letting us help pack lunches. And darker ones, too. Taking a punch to the gut one night for standing up to her husband. Cowering in fear as he drained another handle of vodka. The bumps and thumps on the other side of our locked bedroom door…

"He fell in with a dangerous crowd. The kind of crowd that doesn't need you to turn up at eight every morning to do a day's hard work. The kind of crowd that doesn't care when you turn up to work nursing a two bottle hangover. The kind of crowd that doesn't care that you beat your wife… Organized crime."

"Didn't you do the same?" Ellie's question hung in the air between us, pregnant with meaning.

I couldn't deny it. I nodded. Once, slowly. "You're right. Back then, I didn't know what else I could do. The one thing dad taught me," I laughed, the harsh sound seeming to make Ellie's features wince. "Was how to fight. How to hurt. How to kill… Oh, I learned
that
lesson very well. But I always swore I'd never have kids. Swore that I couldn't bring them into this world. Swore that I wouldn't ever put myself into a situation where my problems could hurt anyone who didn't deserve it."

I stared at Ellie's face, desperately searching for the slightest hint of understanding. I was struggling to find the words for what I needed to tell her. I wanted her to figure out what I was saying without actually having to articulate it.

"He beat us. Made us fight each other for scraps of food, Tim and me. We worked together, most of the time. But sometimes, when we hadn't eaten for days, it's hard to do that, to trust. When there's a scrap of food, and you know it's all you'll eat that day…" I squeezed my eyes shut, reliving every moment. "Hunger makes you do terrible things."

The implication hung between us, heavy with guilt and blame. I let myself wallow in the darkness, believing with every fiber of my being that Ellie must. I didn't deserve her, didn't deserve life, for that matter.

I didn't dare open my eyes. In fact, I kept them squeezed as tightly shut as I could manage. I ran my hand through my hair, brushing my forehead first, and I noticed with surprise that every crease and line on my face had disappeared, the intensity of holding back a wave of emotion that I hadn't allowed myself to confront for years smoothing it until it was as calm as the glassy surface of a lake.

Ellie asked the question that must have been dancing on her lips, the question that I'd been willing her to ask. She said it softly, reserving all judgment, her voice as sweet as a summer's breeze. But it was a question that needed asking, because the truth was, nothing I'd said made the slightest bit of difference to her life, or changed any of what I had done. Not yet.

Except
the truth
was, my past had everything to do with her future. Her child's future.
Our
child's future.

"Why," her voice broke, and I heard the sound of footsteps gently padding across the carpet. "Are you telling me this?"

Ellie took my hand in hers, and I opened my eyes, feeling a hundred pounds of tension streaming out of my body. She knew. I could tell she knew what I was saying, even if it was deep down, in some secret, hidden compartment of her brain.

She knew.

E
llie

A sinking feeling, and not, all at the same time. Like a boat taking on water and throwing it out the other side. My stomach was all at sea, a thousand butterflies floating on nervous thermals. "What are you talking about, Roman?" I asked. "Tell me straight."

He pulled me down onto the couch next to him, soft and gentle, but firm all at once. I collapsed onto it, and resisting, every muscle weaker than it had been at any point during my long spell in hospital. He didn't speak, not for a long time, and every second he waited the tension inside me ramped up another notch, and another, and another. My body was in a strange Neverland, in which every muscle and every limb was powerless to resist, empty of energy and devoid of movement except my chest, which was tight and tiny with tension. I wanted to scream out, and to demand answers on my schedule, not his.

But I didn't do any of that. I felt more powerless than ever before. Roman's head sank into one of his huge hands, but it only lingered there for a second as he composed himself, before it re-emerged. He wore a pained expression on his face as he spoke, pinched with nervousness. "You don't recognize me at all?"

The question hit me like a punch in the gut. Something I felt that I knew a lot about…

It tossed me into a muddy pit of emotion, and I wallowed in its depths, struggling to claw my way out. Its plain simplicity added to its impact, and built upon it. The question called into question everything that I had known to be true – little enough, as
everything
was since my accident. I was scared to blink, or to close my eyes lest memories that I didn't want revealed pulled themselves to the surface.
Who am I?
And more importantly:
who was
I?

"What are you talking about, Roman." I said, repeating his name. It felt meaningful, something to hang on to. After all, if I was saying it like that, it was almost as though I'd only just met him. Which was true. Wasn't it?

He stared at me, and his icy eyes glistened with a hundred colors, flecks of amber and gold and silver and ivy – a sea of hurt. An ocean. I close my eyes, just to escape before I drowned in it. And the second I did, I was assailed by a vicious attack. Not physical, not from Roman, but worse, far more cutting and impossible to evade: memory.

A man in a hockey jersey. No, more than one. Clustering around me. I'm hurting already, but the reason escaped me. I'm in a bar, it's a place I've been before. I won't come back. They are pressing against me, hemming me in, and no one's doing a damn thing about it. I look around, trying to catch someone's eye, but no one will look at me. They're staring into their half empty glasses of beer, or else playing a game of darts. Too intently. They know what's going on, but none of them is man enough to step in. Nor am I. Any scrap of courage I ever had seems to have drained out of my thighs and down through the barstool. Why don't I just get up? I scream at the dream me, but nothing happens. I can't affect it.

The guy in the hockey jersey caresses me, and I close my eyes just hoping that everything will go away. It's happening again. Wait? What does that mean, again? No – that's another river of emotion that I know just by sensing it that I can't handle. Not now. No one's helping me. Wait. There is.

Just one.

I feel safe.

I gasped audibly as my eyes flickered open. "You."

Roman nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't know, not all of it. Not the truth. But I think you knew it the whole time."

I closed my eyes again, searching for an escape, any escape from the crushing weight of truth that was beginning to press down upon my shoulders. "No, no, it can't be true." But even as I said it, I knew that it made sense. I remembered half-snatched fragments of dreams, a vague feeling that I'd met this man before, that I understood why I felt safe by his side even when all sense screamed the opposite. And the way he looked at me. It was honest, caring – and all too much.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. His voice was apologetic and hurt all at the same time. I guessed that perhaps he had harbored some vague hope that everything would turn out all right, that I would jump into his arms and tell him that everything would be okay, that I loved him, and that now we'd found each other, nothing would ever tear us apart.

But life's not like the movies.

"You're, you're…" I stammered, struggling to get the words out. He nodded.

"The father."

My ears rang, suffering under an almost physical assault. It was like someone had taken a hammer to a huge brass bell and held my head to it. I was off-balance, and I would have collapsed without the couch underneath me. Roman put his arms around my body and pulled me to his side, but he held me gingerly, clearly worried about whether he was doing the right thing. I couldn't blame him. I didn't know either. It felt nice, warm, and safe. But I couldn't tear my mind away from the truth of the deceit, nor the fact that he had lied to me. Roman was my kidnapper, my lover, it now seemed, and the father of my baby.

"Tell me everything," I said, pulling away. It was too much to bear, especially in his strong embrace. Escaping his strong warmth was unpleasant, like pulling away the duvet on a cold, wintry day, but it needed to be done. I couldn't trust myself to make the right decision without it. And like it or not, we were bound together by something stronger than love. We shared a child.

He started speaking without so much as a second's hesitation. It wasn't a practiced speech, more a recitation of a million buried thoughts and feelings spewing out in one volcanic eruption. It felt honest, true and from the heart. The choice I needed to make was whether it excused any of what he had done.

"I didn't know when I took you from the hospital. I slept with you what, a year ago?" He continued without waiting for a response, without even looking inquiringly at me. "And then nothing. I didn't see you in that bar again. I went back, more than once, but I don't know whether I really hoped to find you there. You were an illusion, a tantalizing view of salvation – but one I didn't think I deserved." He paused. The silence hung for a few seconds.

"And then?" I prompted, surprised by the fact that my voice came out calm and steady.

"And then I saw your face on my phone," he replied. "A death warrant. Cash for a life. Something I've done more times than I can count on two hands." He said it simply, not bothering to disguise the brutality implicit in his words. I knew the truth, hiding it would have done nothing. Still, I was rocked by the implication. "And I knew right then and there that I couldn't do it again. I'd been wavering for a long time. I told you how I got into this business. Well, not all of it."

He looked up, as if hoping that I would coax the truth out of him. I threw him a lifeline. "Tell me."

"I killed my father," he said finally. A storm of emotions was visible on his face, his cheeks tense and taut with worry and half-suppressed memory. "You know what he did, to me, to us. When Tim died," he croaked, then his voice strengthened. "When
he killed him
, I snapped. I never trained harder than I did back then, and all for one reason. To rid the earth of that man."

I realized that my hand was trembling, and I pressed it against my thigh. My throat was dry, and I realized that I was living vicariously through his pain. "I'm sorry…" I said, but he didn't hear it. Roman's was a mask now, glassy as he molded it to hide the pain. I suspected that he had been doing that for years.

"So I did it," he said, sparing me the details that I desperately wanted to know, but knew better than to fish for. "I killed him, and I didn't stop. I was barely more than a kid, and I didn't know how to do anything else," he laughed bitterly.

"So I did it for cash. Just a little bit, to start, enough to get by. Bad people. Mobsters, gangsters, killers – the scum of the earth. And then I got the good jobs, the ones that pay enough for you to buy a new motorbike, and then a car, and then a house. The first time you kill a man," he glanced subconsciously down at his hands. "It hurts, like you've ripped a band aid off your soul. But I kept doing it and I kept doing it until it didn't hurt anymore. But by then, I was on the verge of breaking. And then I met you, and something changed. Everything changed. I didn't hurt anyone after that. I still got the jobs, sent to my phone like everyone else. I checked them out of habit more than anything else. And then I saw your face flash up on the screen and I knew I couldn't let you end up as just another cold body in the city morgue."

"And that's when you took me from the hospital," I said. Croaked. My mouth bobbed open and shut like a goldfish as my mind attempted to process what Roman had just revealed, its gears turning as slowly as though someone had poured wet concrete over them. It was a wrecking ball of truth. A hammer, smashed directly against the edifice of everything I thought to be true, and shattering it, sending it tumbling to the ground in a spinning shower of shards, a tower of dust as thick and deep as the fog sweeping through my mind.

He could be lying
, my brain warned, a quiet yelp that I could barely hear through the unbearable rushing sound of blood coursing through my ears
.
My hands were sticky, cold and clammy with sweat.
Just spinning a tale that sounds too far-fetched not to be true
,
too unbelievable to be a lie
.
Playing with your heart when you're at your weakest
.
He's a killer
.
He's a kidnapper
.
Is it too much to believe he could be a liar as well?

But one glance at Roman's crushed, broken face told me that he was telling the truth.

And that was way more terrifying.

We were linked together, forever.

And I didn't know how to handle it.