Knocked Up by the Bad Boy (26 page)

It’s the best feeling in the world.

* * *

The TV hums and flickers to life, blowing up a huge display of smoldering metal and yellow firefighters walking in the background.

“
Good afternoon. This is Michelle Fox reporting live from Sorel-Tracy where last night, a tanker truck filled with explosives crashed into the gates of the notorious Sorel-Tracy fortress. Police recovered one body from the fire and suspect—
”

Blood pounds in my ears, drowning out the rest as the camera pans over the wreckage of the blackened truck. A truck full of explosives? And they found a body.

This has Johnny Cravotta written all over it.

Then an intense heat grips my heart as rage sears through my veins, and then I shut the TV off. How fucking dare he? He came home—he knew exactly what happened and lied to my face, and then he prevented me from seeing my own mother.

Don’t act so surprised. You knew what he did.

I grab my phone from my purse and call her number, my hand shaking as I hold it to my ear. I haven’t spoken to her since the engagement party.

“
Hello?
”

“Mom, it’s me. Are you okay?”

“
We’re at the hospital right now.
” A whimper crackles through the speaker. “
Waiting for Julien’s fiancée. He’s dead.
”

Oh my God.

Julien. The newly patched member, who I actually liked. I imagine him faceup on a gurney with hollowed cheeks, and a violent feeling rushes up my throat.

“What the hell happened?”

“
What the hell do you think happened? Your fiancé killed one of our own and sent his body back to us.
”

The air leaves my chest. “He—he wouldn’t do that.”

“
Of course he fucking would
!”

Her scream rings in my ears as two tears slip down my face. She’s right, he would. Especially after one of his guys was put into the hospital.

“Listen, I’m coming to see you,” I say as I walk around the apartment, gathering my shit.

“
Maya, stay where you are. Your father is—
”

“I don’t give a shit.”

I hang up the phone and glance around the empty apartment guiltily, as if Johnny’s somewhere out of sight.

It’ll just be a quick trip. There and back. I’ll get to see my mother, and Johnny will never find out.

* * *

A cold, air-conditioned breeze cycles through the building, making me bury my hands under my arms. My heart beats a violent tattoo as I spot the crowd of leather-clad men lounging in the chairs outside the ICU. A few of them look up as I approach. One of them nudges Dad’s shoulder and he looks up from his chair. Mom freezes on his lap when her eyes pass over me.

A dozen pairs of hostile eyes focus on me as I slowly edge into the room, feeling so awkward that I wish I could vanish on the spot.

Dad strides toward me with Mom hot on his heels. “Carlos!”

My stomach clenches at the furious, hateful look he throws at me, and then he actually lunges at me. I cross my arms, protecting my face as Mom screams at him.

“Stop it!”

My back slams against the wall and his yellowed teeth snarl in my face. “You did this, you stupid slut. You fucking killed him!”

I feel my skin burn as though he slapped me.

“What happened?”

“They burned him. His fiancée can’t even do an open-casket funeral—that son of a bitch!”

I hear his words like a series of physical wounds. One after the other.

“But y-you hurt one of his men.”

“What the fuck did you say to me?”

“You badly hurt one of his men. What did you think he was going to do?”

He grits his teeth and then slowly pulls his lips into a gruesome smile. “You can suck his cock all you want. You’re dead to me.”

Mom shoves his chest as he points a finger in my face, and I tremble as I listen to him denounce me in front of everyone I know. My cousins—my uncles.

“I hope you have a miscarriage. No!” he screams, turning to my mom. “She’s one of them now!”

“What the fuck is your problem with Italians?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he spits.

“I do. You’re just a dumb redneck—”

He shakes his head, laughing, and then something strange shines in his eyes. Something that almost looks like pity. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Italians have been ruining our lives for decades—controlling our drugs, extorting local businesses, making this city’s infrastructure a shit-hole. At least we don’t fuck with civilians. They kill people and they don’t give a damn. That’s what you’ve chosen, little Maya. You chose a rotten man—”

Even though my heart pounds so fast, I can still hear myself barely whisper, “He’s been good to me.”

“He killed his own father to become boss. Did he tell you that?” All the blood pools to my feet as Dad smiles humorlessly. “No, of course not.”

“Dad, I—”

“I would have set you up with a nice life. Any one of the guys in the MC would’ve treated you well, but instead you chose this piece-of-shit man who will throw you out the moment you’re used up.”

Then his eyes glance behind me and I turn instinctively, right into someone’s chest. He grabs my arms and I try to jump away, but it’s only Johnny, whose face is stony.

“Carlos, I’d appreciate it if you stopped sending your guys after my men. Things could get a bit—
hot
.”

Jesus.

“You
fucking
cocksucker!”

One of his men slams Dad’s chest as he drags my father, who only has eyes for Johnny.

“
Take it easy
,” he hisses in my dad’s ear.

Johnny watches him and mutters under his breath. “Yeah, take it easy,
criss de tabarnak
.”

I barely feel his arm curling over my shoulder, and I don’t fight back when he turns me around. I feel Johnny’s burning heat right through my skin. His anger pounds through his feet. His fingers scratch me through the thin t-shirt I’m wearing.

He’s fucking pissed that I came here. Well so the fuck am I. He lied to me.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I keep tabs on you.” His voice is tight.

“Oh, so now you don’t trust me?” I yank my arm out of his grip and Johnny’s eyebrows rise.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You’re a lying, cold bastard.”

He lunges at me, and I’m so surprised at the pain crushing my arm that tears spring to my eyes. We’re standing in the middle of a busy hallway, but he doesn’t give a shit.

“I don’t want to hear this shit right now. You came here when I told you not to—I told you it was dangerous.”

“She’s my mother! What did you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to be smart.”

The vicious burn seethes in my chest as he pulls me down the hall, and I’m bursting to scream at him. How dare he admonish me?

He stops suddenly when we go outside and I bump into his back, swearing. Johnny gives me an icy look.

“I don’t want to hear a goddamn word from you while we’re in the car. I’m serious. It could be bugged.”

This time he leads me to his car, hardly sparing me a backward glance as he walks across the parking lot. My head still pounds with everything my dad said, and he opens the car door for me. I pause and think of what a mess I’ve made with my life.

“Get in.”

The car ride is tense and my fists clench whenever he takes a sharp turn, or puts his foot on the gas, flooring it. I dare to glance at him and immediately regret it. His whole face burns red, but he stares straight ahead.

“I can’t fucking wait—”

“Maya, don’t—”

“You lied to me about everything.”

I feel so fucking stupid. The things my father said chilled me to the bone, and I can’t pretend that I’m not really fucking worried that he’s exactly what Dad said he was.

Julien is gone, and they actually strapped his body to the windshield and lit it on fire.
God
. I can’t even imagine.

“Wait ’til we get home.”

“
No
. Let’s talk about this now.”

“Fuck!”

He slams the brakes in the middle of the street and the car grinds to a halt. I feel my insides lurch as he stops the car, smoke billowing around the tires. My hands slip against the leather, chest pulsing as I realize we’ve come to a full stop.

“Maya,
please fucking wait
until we get home.”

I’ll wait ’til we get home, and then the gloves are coming off.

He parks the car and slams the door, but I get out before he can reach my side. Fuck him.

I march past him, hardly giving him a glance, and he catches my arm, pulling me to his side effortlessly.

“What the hell?”

“Don’t treat me like a jerk-off, Maya. I don’t care how pissed you are with me.”

And then that bastard plants a soft kiss over my lips, and it’s so sweet that it almost distracts me from my anger. It makes me cling to him a little bit longer when I just want to smack the smile off his fucking face. Then I remember how pissed I’m supposed to be, and I rip away from his side. His chuckle raises my hackles and I stalk into the elevator, pounding the button so I don’t have to look at his face.

As soon as the door closes, Johnny tries to pull me in his arms. “
Hey
.”

“Don’t fucking touch me!”

I slap his hands away and stare into the mirror, watching his deepening frown.

“You lied to me.”

He approaches me close enough to hiss in my ear. “If I didn’t, you would have headed for that fucking place and gotten yourself killed.”

“You killed Julien and he was just a kid. Barely younger than me—”

“That
kid
was the part of the crew that bashed Michael’s fucking brain in. My soldier captured him, and we killed him. An eye for an eye.”

The fucking indifference.

“So they hurt one of you, and you react by killing one of them and setting his body on fire?”

“Yes,” he says, deadpan.

He looks like nothing in the world could possibly be wrong with that. The elevator pings and he exits first. I trail after him as he unlocks the door.

“I have a question for you: how fucked up are you?”

I’m marrying a fucking monster.

He grabs my arm with a frustrated sigh and yanks me inside the apartment, slamming the door shut. Then he locks the door and I stumble backward, startled from the noise.

“I’m not a monster, Maya.”

“You strapped him to that car—and you burned him.”

That pretty much makes you one.

“He was already dead.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He pins me against the wall with his eyes, which are shrouded in the darkness of his apartment. “There’s nothing wrong with a man trying to defend his family.”

“What family?”

“
You
, goddamn it!”

My back hits the wall sharply as he starts forward, grabbing my shoulders. The emotion twisting his face stuns me into silence.

“I’ll do anything—
kill anyone
to keep my family safe.”

“That kid—”

“—was a fucking degenerate, just like the rest of them. He knew what he was signing up for. What, I’m supposed to roll over and let them fuck me in the ass?”

Tears build up behind my eyes, and I don’t know why. I know he’s right. There are all these feelings burgeoning inside me, and I don’t know where they’re coming from. Maybe it’s just that I’m having a fucking baby with this man—this beast of a man who can’t even tell me anything real about himself.

“My dad told me things.”

His hands slide up my shoulders, disappearing around my neck. “I’m sure he did.”

The dismissive tone makes me fire back.

“He said you killed your father to become boss!”

I expect him to pull back in disgust.

I expect him to deny it.

A smile staggers across his face.

“Yeah, I did.”

Oh God.

“And I’d do it again, and again—and again. That miserable prick had it coming.”

“Oh my God.”

He cups my face, but I worm away from him, backing into the pitch-black living room. He won’t let me go. Swift hands wind around my waist and pull me closer, right up against his chest where I can feel his heart beating.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“I don’t know how to look at you anymore. You’re not the man I thought you were.”

“I’m the same man you met in that bar, hon. I’m just—
more
.”

My hands are pinned against his chest, and I can barely draw in breath. Soft eyes look down at me.

“You won’t tell me anything about yourself.”

“That’s not true.”

“You killed your own father to get ahead. Why?”

His body leaves my side as a shadow descends over him like a shroud. “That’s not exactly what happened.”

Johnny walks away from me, looking back as though he expects me to follow, and I do. I follow him all the way into his study, where he walks behind his desk and opens a drawer, fishing out a dusty picture frame. He blows air over the glass and hands it to me.

“That’s me and my dad.”

An older, balding man with vague good looks throws an arm around a small boy with dark hair and eyes. The same eyes staring at me right now.

“I told you he was in the life with me. He groomed me, you know? Raised me in the mob so that one day I could take his position after he retired.”

“Did you get along?”

He smiles. “Yeah. I worshipped my dad. To me, he was a goddamn hero.”

How the fuck do you go from there to killing your dad?

The smile disappears. “The problems came in my midtwenties, when I started making millions of dollars for the family a month. I surpassed all the captains—surpassed
him
. At the time, my dad was a capo
and I worked under him. I was getting a lot of attention in the papers for how successful I was. Basically, I was getting too big, too fast.”

The pain tightening his voice makes me want to reach out to him, even though I don’t even know what happened.

“They pulled me in for a meeting and everyone was there. They asked me all kinds of questions and my dad said nothing to defend me. I think they were nervous about me. Young kid, lots of money—I could have made stupid decisions and gotten the family under fire. Anyway, I left that meeting knowing that my time was limited. Sooner or later, one of them was going to pop me.”