Mobster's Baby: Bad Boy Mafia Romance (5 page)

Axel

“Jackson, you got any news for me?” I leaned against the counter and eyed my best friend. “I’m hopin’ to hear somethin’ good.”

Jackson shook his head. The light reflected off his greased-back hair. “I ain’t heard nothin’,” he said. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Shoving my hands in my pockets, I turned away from the counter. I’d been trying to set up a big coke deal for over a month now. My father, Leo, had tasked me with it and I knew his approval was waiting on me getting the job done. Until I could fix this, I had no chance of taking over after him one day. The coke deal was going to be the biggest the family had ever organized. I was supposed to arrange for over a ton of cocaine to be trafficked into New York, all from humble little Morris, New Jersey. It was a deal that was really going to put me on the map, and I couldn’t wait to be involved.

“So you know when you’re gonna hear something?”

Jackson shook his head. “Sorry, man, I can’t tell you. I don’t know.” He shrugged at me and I felt a fresh wave of irritation pass over me.

“If you can’t get this shit straightened out, Leo ain’t gonna pass the business into my hands.”

Jackson nodded. “I know your pa’s the boss, but if I can’t make it happen, I can’t make it happen.” He shrugged at me again. “Try again in a few days.”

Muttering angrily under my breath, I kicked my boot at the scuffed linoleum. Jackson worked part-time in an auto parts store off the main highway outside of Morris. He supposedly had some Russian contacts who were looking to unload a few kilos of cocaine, and we were supposed to grab as many as possible for the big drop. But now I wasn’t even sure that was a possibility. After all, if Jackson wasn’t gonna deliver, the deal was off.

My mood got even blacker as I slid behind the wheel of my car and drove to my father’s house. Leo Riccardi, lived in a big house outside of town. My mom died back when I was a little kid, and Dad never got remarried. He had girlfriends who hung around; after a few years, he’d switch the current girl out for someone younger. But right now, I didn’t care about how he let my mother’s memory disappear. Right now I was only concerned with the future.

Leo had been sick for almost a year now. I suspected he had some kind of bad cancer—he had a lot of doctor’s appointments and almost never seemed to look better. But he didn’t talk to me like that, we didn’t have that kind of relationship. Even though I’d grown up in his house, he hadn’t been the one who raised me. He’d always hired people, nannies and tutors and shit. And then when I was old enough, he sent me off to boarding school in upstate New York. So I hadn’t been around the man in my formative years. I never talked to him about how it felt to get drunk for the first time, or how it felt to stick my fingers inside the lacy cups of Mary Prezzioso’s bra and feel her hard nipples. No, that kind of talk was saved for my buddies. Jackson and I had gone to school together but he’d dropped out after his own father died. He couldn’t afford tuition anymore so he’d come home and gotten a job. Leo had taken pity on him and paid for the rest of his schooling. I couldn’t ever admit it, but part of me always resented Jackson for that. My papa seemed to love him more than he loved his own flesh and blood. Jackson was a good guy, but sometimes I had doubts about him. Sometimes I wondered whether or not he was going to try to take over. The way Leo favored him, well, it wouldn’t exactly have come as a shock.

Jackson had been my best friend, but now I wondered if he was trying to become my enemy. And now, part of me couldn’t help but wonder if he was trying to fuck me on this coke deal. It would have been easy for Jackson to lie. For Jackson to get the coke from his Russian buddies, then to stash it and wait for me to be ousted by my own father. Then Jackson could go up to my old man and say
he
had the stash, just say the word. I shook my head. I knew it was useless thinking like this, but I couldn’t help it. This whole situation had put me in one hell of a rut.

My father’s house was a grand Colonial-style. It would have been a real classy place aside from the lawn furniture that was scattered across the front lawn. An almost-naked brunette girl was stretched out on a chaise lounge with a pink drink in her tan hand.

“Hey, boy,” she called. “It’s been a while, Axel!”

“Hi, Terry,” I said. The brunette girl rolled her eyes.

The brunette girl rolled her eyes. “It’s Theresa,” she said pointedly. “No one calls me Terry anymore.” She flashed me a bright-white smile and rolled over on her belly, squeezing her tits together with her arms. “You wanna have a drink with me?” Her skin was so brown that she almost looked native.

I rolled my eyes. Ignoring her, I stepped into the house. “Pa?” I called loudly. “You in here?”

“I’m upstairs,” Leo roared back. “Come up here, Axel.”

I let the glass partition door slam to a close behind me and took the steps up two at a time.

“Hi, Pops,” I said as I slid into his bedroom. “How ya feeling today?”

Leo coughed. When my eyes focused on him in the semidarkness, I could barely restrain myself from gasping. Leo looked horrible. He was both emaciated and shrunken, with his skin in loose flaps all over his body. He’d been dark like me, but in his old age, he was looking increasingly pale. He was almost bald, except for a few greasy black strands that were clinging to his scalp. I shuddered as the smell of old person hit me—like mothballs that had been stored in a closet. He smelled like he was rotting from the inside out.

“Not good,” Leo said. “Sit down, boy. Talk.”

I flopped into a chair at the foot of the bed and tried to keep my face neutral as I stared at the skeleton that had once been my father. “Jackson still doesn’t have any intel,” I said carefully. “I checked again today and he said he ain’t heard nothin’.”

Leo shook his head. He opened his mouth to reply but a loud cough came out instead. I waited patiently for his fit to subside. When he looked at me again, he was red in the face from the effort of his illness.

“I was worried you’d say that,” Leo said drily. “He doesn’t have any idea when those Russians are going to come through?”

I shook my head. “It could be a week, it could be another month,” I said with a sigh. “I’m going to start looking for another source. I know a few dealers in the area who might like to step up to the challenge.”

Leo shook his head. “I want this done through the Russians. They’re the most professional out of everyone, you know it’ll be done clean. We have the funds, right? What’s the hold up?”

A man never felt powerless like he did when he told his father that he didn’t know. “No idea,” I admitted. “I know it’s not what you wanna hear, Pops.”

“You’re damn right it’s not what I want to hear,” Leo grumbled. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel comfortable leaving the family business to you when you can’t even pull off a simple deal like this one. Men in my day used to get things done, we didn’t sit around on our asses and fuck women all day instead.”

An insult about Theresa was on the tip of my tongue but I didn’t say anything. Theresa and I had gone to high school together; she was a year or so younger than me. And now she was my dad’s newest plaything, a sort of live-in girlfriend who could cook and clean for him. She looked like she was having fun but I never asked her how it really felt to take care of such an ailing geezer. Leo was a temperamental old man. I couldn’t imagine they’d sit around playing bingo or some shit like that. And judging from her antics on the lawn, I had a feeling she was probably pretty fucking bored.

“Pops, I do the best I can,” I snapped. “I’ll get this fixed. Trust me.”

Leo eyed me with surprising intelligence for someone who was so clearly ailing. “I’ll trust you when I see the stuff. You plan on showing that to me soon?”

“Soon as I get it,” I said. I could feel my blood pressure rising by the second. “I got another meeting with Jackson tonight. If he doesn’t say shit, I’m going to the Russians myself.” I paused—it was a bold statement. “I’ll make something happen, Pops. Just you wait.”

“I been waiting a month now,” Leo snapped. “And good. You handle it yourself if you want to make sure it gets done. I told you that years ago, boy. You never listen to me.”

“I got to go, Pops,” I said, stepping forward and leaning down to kiss Leo’s cheek. He smelled like bathroom cleaner and mold. “Have a good day, you hear? Be good to Terry.”

“She’s getting old,” Leo said in a distasteful voice. “Can’t you find me another girl? A good cook this time. She burns everything. I have to tell her I want the damn food raw for her to cook it good!”

“Alright, Pops, I’ll tell her to stop,” I said. Leo looked away and I knew that was my cue to leave.

“Wait, Axel,” Leo said. He let out a heavy breath. “There’s one more thing. Come sit.” He patted the bed next to him. I walked over and sat down. “I have some news.”

“Yeah?” I looked at him. “What is it, Pops?”

“Gianni has a daughter,” Leo said shortly. “A grown daughter. Probably close to your age. And we gotta find her.”

I frowned. “What the fuck, he had a kid? I never fuckin’ knew that. That old dog!”

Leo actually laughed. “He had a wife, too, can you believe that shit? Kept it a secret for so fuckin’ long. And we thought he was a homo!” He started laughing again until tears were running down his dry, wrinkled face. “Poor Gianni, rest in peace, you bastard.”

I blinked. “So…her last name would be Campanella,” I offered.

Leo nodded. “Right, somethin’ like that. I don’t know what happened to his wife. I never bothered to ask. But I found out about the daughter today. Gianni must have loved her—he left her everything. And someone’s gonna come sniffing around for her now that the news is out.”

I shifted uncomfortably on the bed. Suddenly everything from that night started to make sense. Why Portia said she hadn’t grown up with her father. How she and her mother had always been poor. Why she had that great last name and she was still working as a waitress. “I think I found her,” I said. “Her name is Portia.”

“Good,” Leo said. He didn’t even seem remotely surprised. “Gianni always wore this.” He dipped his hand into the night table and came back with part of a gold necklace. “If it’s her, she’ll have the other half.” He handed me the locket and suddenly a heavy memory from the night with Portia came rushing back to me, flooding my senses. I shuddered. It was like she was in the room with me.

“I got it, Pops,” I said to Leo. “I’ll find her.”

Leo nodded. “Soon, boy,” he added. “She’s in danger, and it’s growing every day.”

Portia

I spent the rest of the night in a daze. Rocky let me go home—Tania ran to him and told him that I barfed. He was at the door of the ladies’ before I could even step outside.

“Portia, go home,” Rocky said in disgust. “You’re too sick to be at work. What did I fuckin’ tell you?”

I blushed a bright hot red. “I’m sorry, Rocky. I wasn’t feeling this poorly when I left the house.”

I was afraid to be alone with myself. When I got out of work, I called Jeanine.

“Hey, are you busy?”

“Never too busy for you,” Jeanine said ironically. “What can I do you for, Porsch?”

“I need help,” I mumbled into the phone. “I’m coming over. Are you home?”

“Yeah,” Jeanine said. She covered the receiver and I heard her yell something to someone. “Sorry, the kid’s being a brat,” she said mildly. “Come on over. We’re having macaroni and cheese for dinner. Can you bring a vegetable?”

The sound of both mac and cheese and vegetables filled me with the urge to vomit again, but I didn’t want to tell her I was pregnant. I didn’t want to say the words aloud. I didn’t want them to be true. If they were true…well, if they were true, then I’d decide what to do when I knew for sure. But right now, I didn’t want to jinx myself. That was like asking for trouble.

I dreaded the idea of telling Axel. I didn’t know whether or not I should say anything. After our night together, even though it was magnificent, he’d made it pretty fucking clear that he didn’t want a relationship with me. And if I told him I was pregnant, I wasn’t even sure if he’d believe me. After all, women did things like that sometimes. Chris had told me that was why he’d married his wife. Then a few months after the wedding, she had a “miscarriage.” When Chris had first told me the story, I’d been horrified. But now I could sort of see the point of view: if a woman thought a man was going to walk no matter what, why not try to trap him into staying? Obviously, that wasn’t what I’d done at all.

Obviously, that wasn’t what I’d done at all. 

When I left work, I drove to a drugstore. The arsenal of pregnancy tests—a bunch of pink and blue boxes—confronted me as I stared at them. They almost seemed to taunt me, like they knew what the result was going to be. I shuddered. Finally, I grabbed a handful of different brands and carried them to the counter. The clerk was indifferent. I might as well have been buying hemorrhoid ointment or a package of bacon. When I’d paid and the tests were in a bag, I rushed over to the grocery store. The first vegetable I saw that didn’t make me feel even more nauseous was some corn. I grabbed a few ears and paid for them, then dashed out of the store and hopped back in the car. I had to pee in an urgent way that I hadn’t felt a few minutes ago. I wondered if it was the pregnancy tests, subconsciously messing with me.

“Hi,” I said a few breathless minutes later. “Can I use your bathroom?”

Jeanine was juggling a toddler on her hip and a baby in her arms. “Sure,” she said. She looked older and more tired than she had the last time I’d seen her. I thrust the bag of corn at her feet and leapt past her, down the hallway to the messy bathroom with the pink-tiled floor that I remembered so well.

Jeanine had bought her parents’ house and they’d used the money to buy a retirement condo in Florida. Even though our mothers had been best friends, I hadn’t seen Jeanine’s mom since I was in high school. I remembered the house really well, though. I had memories of being hungover in this very bathroom, puking until I thought my guts were going to fall out. I remember that I’d fallen asleep on the grimy pink tiles. Jeanine had brought me a box of soda crackers and some ginger ale and stayed up with me all night. Back when we were good friends. Back when I wasn’t such a shitty person to her.

I dumped the bag on the floor and the pregnancy tests scattered everywhere. Grabbing a pink box, I ripped the cardboard flaps open and squatted on the toilet with the plastic stick held between my legs. Even though I really had to pee, I had to close my eyes and relax before the stream started coming. Warm urine gushed over my hand and I jerked back, sending droplets across the already messy bathroom.

With a deep sigh, I set a timer for three minutes on my phone. I grabbed another pregnancy test box. Couldn’t hurt, right? The worst it could do was lie to me.

“Portia, are you all right in there?” Jeanine rapped on the door. I heard the toddler wailing to be put down and Jeanine’s subsequent fussy replies. “Do you need any help?”

“I’m fine,” I called through gritted teeth. “Just feeling kind of sick.”

“You look like hell,” Jeanine said casually. “You know, if you let yourself go, that guy isn’t going to come back and ask you out.”

I could have slapped her. “I’ll be right out!” I called in a fake-cheery voice. “Okay, just leave me alone for a couple of minutes.”

“Fine, you don’t have to be so touchy,” Jeanine replied. I let out a sigh of relief when I heard her heavy footsteps down the hallway. “I was only trying to help.”

The timer on my phone dinged. I shut my eyes and reached out the stick that I’d first used. With trembling fingers, I brought it close to me. There was a plus sign on the test. I let out a loud wail and threw the stick against the wall. It clattered to the floor just as I felt the tears well up in my eyes.

***

“You still look like hell,” Jeanine said after I’d plopped down at the kitchen table and told her everything. “So you’re p.g., huh?”

“Unfortunately,” I said with a grimace. Jeanine frowned. “I mean, I didn’t mean it like that,” I explained. “I just…it was a one-night stand! I don’t want a baby from a one-night stand!”

“So get an abortion,” Jeanine said. She lit a cigarette and exhaled gracefully over her shoulder. “You’re going to hell anyway.” She winked at me and I felt myself relax just a tenth of an inch.

“I can’t get an abortion,” I said. “I couldn’t do that to my baby.” Even though I wasn’t sure how I felt about what was growing inside of me, I didn’t think I could just get rid of it. After all, having an abortion just because it wouldn’t be a convenient time for me to have the baby would be heartless. I couldn’t do something like that.

Jeanine rolled her eyes. “That’s what I said, too,” she replied. “But trust me,
that
is a baby,” she said, pointing towards the wailing infant in his crib on the other side of the room. “What’s inside of you ain’t a baby. That’s just a bunch of cells together, sweetheart. You gotta do what’s best for you, you know?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t seem right,” I said. Jeanine glared at me. “But I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Good girl,” Jeanine said. She ashed her cigarette in an empty can of Pepsi. “I wish I’d been smarter about having these rugrats around. I shoulda known Derrick was a deadbeat.”

Derrick was the man who’d fathered Jeanine’s two children. They were still married, legally, but he’d been gone for over six months now with no word. She claimed that she didn’t know what had happened to him, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if Jeanine had been the one to tell him to go. She liked to do things her own way. I could see her kicking him out just for leaving the toilet seat up.

“I just don’t know what to do,” I moaned, putting my head in my hands on the table. “I don’t think he wants anything to do with me. He made it pretty fucking clear he doesn’t want a relationship with me.”

Jeanine shrugged. “Some guys come around when their little swimmers have done God’s work,” she said sarcastically. “You think he’d jump on the daddy train?”

I laughed bitterly. “He is
not
father material,” I said. “His
mansion
is a glorified bachelor pad. I couldn’t see a kid crawling around there.”

Jeanine shrugged. “So then he might give you some money,” she said. “You ever thought of that? I only have to work two days a week. Derrick’s parents take care of me.”

I looked around her messy house.
I don’t think taken care of is the right word for you,
I thought. But I knew with Axel it would probably be different. His leather furniture had spoken of wealth, not to mention that incredible car he drove around. Maybe he would pay me once he found out I was pregnant. Maybe he’d want to be involved, maybe not. But maybe, just maybe, there was a chance I wouldn’t have to do this alone.

“You’re not alone,” Jeanine said, as if reading my mind. “A hundred thousand women have all been there before, you know that. It ain’t just you, sweetheart. Men are scum.”

I bit my lip. “I hated growing up without a father,” I said softly. “I always used to wish that he was alive, especially when I fought with my mom.”

Jeanine nodded. “Rose was a bear. Even Mom said so. And those two were thick as thieves.”

***

The next day, I got ready for work. I didn’t know whether or not Rocky would turn me away, but I really needed some extra cash. Those bills were due, and I’d made an appointment with a doctor for the end of next week. I wanted to get a blood test and make sure I was really, actually pregnant. If I wasn’t, I could let out a sigh of relief. But a doctor visit wasn’t going to be free, and I needed some cash.

“You look better,” Rocky said as soon as I got to work. I held my breath, waiting for him to ask if I was pregnant. But instead, he nodded. “Portia, take out the trash before your shift.”

I waited until he’d turned around before the disgust truly hit me. I gagged and covered it with a heavy cough. I could smell the garbage through the whole restaurant—I didn’t know how I was going to manage to drag the bag outside. But I didn’t want to piss Rocky off any more than I already had. I knew I’d be eating crow for a couple of weeks in order to get my place back. And when I started showing, I just knew he was going to give me hell.

Grabbing the heavy trash bags, I hefted them over my shoulder and held my breath. As soon as I shoved open the door, I saw there were two men in the alley. Gasping, I dropped the bags and slumped down low behind a dumpster. They were both wearing sharkskin suits and dark sunglasses and I had a bad feeling about both of them.

“We gotta get him soon,” one of them said in a low voice. There was a pause and a click as he lit a cigarette. “We wasted too much time already.”

“We got a deal in place,” the other one replied. “We got a deal to take down that asshole, Axel Riccardi. He ain’t gonna know what hit him.”

I gasped and stumbled backwards. Just then, one of the trash bags spilled over and some silverware clanked against the dumpster. I cried out in surprise and froze. The men were at my side in a second.

“Hey, pretty lady,” one of them said. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re not supposed to eavesdrop?”

I squawked in protest as they stepped forward and grabbed my arms, dragging me away before I even had the chance to scream.