The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance (21 page)

The next thing I did was nearly a reflex at this point. I called Marcelo. What the hell was I even going to say to him? Was there a chance that he knew and he hadn’t told me? In the event that he did know, then so what? What would he do about it? There was nothing he could do but be there—and that was what I needed. I just needed there to be another person with me in this house before I lost my mind completely. I waited for four rings before the call ended because he hadn’t picked up. Where was he? Why did I want him here?

It was about an hour before he got home. I know because I was counting. I heard him hollering from downstairs. He called my name, looking for me until he finally made his way up and into our room. I had assumed a seat on the bed, and when I saw him, I cracked. Whatever had been holding me together previously let go, and the weight of my shock and sorrow flowed through me completely out of control. I suddenly felt his arms around me as he held me.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard it, but now I did, and the truth felt like knives. It felt like unbearable pressure pressing down on me from every direction. My
dad
. He was gone. I could hear Marcelo’s voice telling me it was okay and to calm down. I appreciated his being there, but that didn’t bring my father back. I cried until I tired myself out, resting on the bed with Marcelo beside me. His fingers ran through my hair in an effort to calm me down.

“Did you know?” I asked him.

“I just found out today. I wanted to be the one who told you in person.”

“My mom told me. She called when I was in the shower,” I told him.

“Did she tell you the details?” he asked.

Did I really want to know them?

“What details?” I asked. “It happened outside
Puglia
.”

“The details on who might have done it.”

I sat up and looked at him.

“Mom said it was a rival group or family. Do you know who did it?”

“There’s a chance that some of my people or my father’s people had something to do with it,” he said. I looked at him stunned because he wasn’t making sense.

“But… but,
how
? I thought that… I thought that we got married so that things like this wouldn’t happen anymore.”

“I spoke with my men as soon as I found out. Unless one of them is lying, there is no way any of them were behind it. I know my father wouldn’t try something like this after going through the trouble of settling his differences with your father with the two of us. Something’s not right.”

I looked at him at a loss for what to say. What
could
I say? He had just told me that my dad was dead and there was a chance that the people he associated with had something to do with it.

“Sophie? Say something,” he said to me. I looked at him sadly. I had nothing.

“I… I just need a minute,” I said to him.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked.

I thought about it. I had just heard that my father had been murdered, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a chance that the Orsinis, of which Marcelo was one, had something to do with it. Instinctively, I knew that that couldn’t be the case. I desperately wanted it not to be the case because what the hell was I supposed to do if I found out Marcelo or his father, my father-in-law had organized for the murder of my dad? I felt like someone had just crumbled the earth below my feet and that I was falling. I felt alone and scared, and I didn’t want to sleep in that bed alone.

“No. Stay.”

It was just like the night that he had run me a bath and sat in it with me. We lay on the bed and Marcelo wrapped his arms around me. We were silent. At some point, I drifted off to sleep. Maybe when I woke up, this would all just be a dream.

Marcelo

Between my father and my pregnant wife.

Between the man who raised me and the woman I loved.

One had given me life and one
was
my life.

One had just lost their father and the other was probably the reason why it had happened.

What a position to be in.

I didn’t wish it upon anyone.

I had raced home after finding out that Frank Dandolo had been killed. The only thing on my mind was whether Sophie knew and who had told her. I wanted it to be me because, dammit, I was scared. I knew how it looked. It didn’t take a genius to see that in the event that something like this happened, my family would be the prime suspect.

I mean, of
course
we were. Who the hell else would you think of before us?

Were we the only crime family in New York that disliked Frank Dandolo? No, but we were the ones who disliked him the
most
. Something that Sophie and I had had to pay for with our singlehood.

And
there
it was. That was why there was no way my father could have done this. No way. Both my father and Sophia’s father had taken the steps to make some sort of peace between us—because if they hadn’t we would all be dead right now.

There was no way my father had had anything to do with it. In any ordinary circumstance, he wasn’t above things like this, but in this particular one, there was
no
way
he did this, not to me and not to us. I doubt that he had any real affection for Sophia before or after we got married, but the one thing he did have was respect and years of experience that meant he knew what doing something like this would mean.

Something wasn’t right. The man was smart and that meant he knew better than to go after Frank. I mean, why the hell would he? Frank used to be his enemy, but after Sophie and I got married, he became an asset. The two of them together were powerful, their reach was further, and they were feared and respected.

No.

There was no way he did it.

I knew my dad wouldn’t have taken kindly to me coming to the house unannounced the way I was about to, but this was serious. He had probably already heard, and we needed to have a meeting, even if it was just him and me.

I had made sure that Daniella was in the house before I left for my father’s house. I would have brought Sophia, but she was in no position or state to move or want to be moved. She had been
crushed
. Absolutely shattered by the news. When I had found her waiting for me, I knew that she knew. I could see it on her face when she looked at me. I honestly believed for a second that she would accuse me of having something to do with it.

There was no way I could have kept that a secret from her. I was ready for her to push me away—and she hadn’t. I couldn’t have left her in the house alone. Fuck. What a time for this to happen. It was almost like this was calculated. It was like whoever had done it knew that Sophia was just beginning to become happy and comfortable being married to me and they decided to fuck it up. It was like whoever did this knew and they had ulterior motives.

I felt sick. I felt angry. Someone was playing with fire and they were about to get burned. Not only were they fucking with my family and our business, they were fucking with Sophia, and when you fuck with Sophia, you fuck with me. Frank Dandolo wasn’t perfect, but she loved him—and that was all that mattered. There was no way this wasn’t calculated to devastate Sophia specifically and put a strain on the relationship that our families had formed.

I got to the house and had to wait downstairs for about an hour before my father was ready to see me. Mom was apparently in the house too, but I didn’t see her. It was the man I wanted to see. Something was telling me that he hadn’t had anything to do with what had happened, but waiting for him, the thought that he maybe did made me mad.

What if he
had
done it, or had had it done? What if this was his plot from the very beginning with having Sophia and I married in the first place? I mean, if that was what he wanted then that was a perfect idea that he had put together. First, get your own son and the child of your arch rival married. That would disarm him. That would bring the two of you closer and unite your strengths. You had the chance to get in, really go deep and see the way he runs his operations. He might let you in on some secrets; you might even become cautious friends. He would have no reason to doubt or suspect you because the two of you made a fair trade; your first born child for his first born child. A son for a daughter.

The more I thought about it, the less fair the trade seemed. Sure, both were losing their only children, but Frank was losing more. He was already at a sort of disadvantage with the fact that Sophia was a woman and they didn’t have any more children. She would not pass the Dandolo name on into the future, since she was marrying me, she would pass the Orsini name on. It didn’t even stop there. She was the one who was expected to join my family, not I join hers. My father was very much gaining a daughter, but Frank wasn’t really gaining a son. There must have been more to it somehow because there was no way that Frank had been totally unaware of the sort of exchange that was going on. Maybe that was the case, but then again, maybe there were layers to this that were hidden to me, that I didn’t understand and that somehow made the agreement sweet enough of a deal for Frank to actually want to take it. I could not speak on Frank Dandolo’s character, but I could talk about my father. The man was cold-blooded.

It would have been a cinch for him to kill Frank. It would have been criminally easy to get him at that point, and since they had already declared their unity, perhaps his territory and empire would fall under his control by default once he was dead anyway.
Brilliant
. I just hoped it wasn’t true. I wasn’t ready to completely forsake my father and everything that I had been raised to know and strive for as an Orsini, but if my father had
anything
to do with this, he was losing his son
today
.

He finally came down the stairs. He looked a little agitated to see me.

“Marcelo,” he said in greeting, “what brings you here so early?”

It was still morning. It wasn’t even ten yet. He could put that fake-outraged act to rest because I knew for a fact that I hadn’t woken him from his beauty rest. I knew he wasn’t about to start going into why it was incorrect etiquette to show up unannounced at a person’s house before noon. No way. We weren’t playing that game today. Not when my wife was sick with grief and there was a chance that he had something to do with it.

“You really don’t know, Dad? Frank Dandolo is dead. Murdered. Do you know anything about this?”

My father's eyes narrowed; the same dark brown eyes that I had inherited from him.

“Let’s sit. I know you must have a lot of questions.”

I watched him make his way to his office in disbelief. He was
way
too calm in all of this. Why didn’t he look like he cared, or even knew what was going on? In his office, we sat the way we had sat many times, including the time that he had told me I was going to marry Frank Dandolo’s daughter, Sophia. I braced myself because the possibility that he was going to open his mouth and say something hideous to me was still there.

“Why are you here, son?” he asked me.

“
Why am I here
? What are you talking about, Dad? Frank is dead. Sophia’s father is dead.”

“And you think I don’t know that? Why did you
really
come here? It wasn’t to tell me that Frank had been murdered.”

“Did you do it?”

“No,” he said simply.

His answer annoyed me. It was too brief and too dismissive.
No
? What the hell did he mean,
no
? That was the answer to the question that I had asked, but it was by no means a substantial answer. That didn’t tell me anything new or answer the question as to who actually did do it if it was not him. He must have sensed my anger because he spoke before I could.

“What makes you think I would do something like that, Marcelo?”

“You and Frank were enemies.”

“And then you and his daughter got married. We buried our differences. The joining of our families was a unification tool in more ways than one. I may have had my quarrels with him in the past, but at the end, we realized we would be stronger united and that was what we did. We united. I don’t know what you think is going on, but I have nothing to do with it.”

“Then who did it?”

“I can't tell you that, Marcelo. I can only tell you what I did or didn’t do. I had nothing to do with Frank Dandolo’s death. I wouldn’t do that to myself, to
your,
or even to your wife. Do you know what this means for us? Dandolo’s absence means there’s a power vacuum that someone most likely is going to try and fill.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. We can hold his men and his territory for a while, but at some point, he is going to need a successor.”

I took a minute to realize what my father was talking about.

“You don’t mean—”

“He has no other children. It
has
to be her,” he said. It was laughable to think about because I actually knew her, but my father was dead serious. Was the head position of underground organized crime a place for a woman? Sure, maybe some women, but not Sophia. I was going to make the decision for her even though it would piss her off. No. That one wasn’t happening. She was not getting into this whole circus. She didn’t even entertain it; there was no way she would want to step up into her father’s position.

“She was crushed by the news. Dad, she’s pregnant, she can’t fill his position, not right now and not in the state that she’s in.”

“I’m just telling you what needs to happen,” he said. “For her sake, mine and your own, you need to find out who killed Frank.”

“For
my
sake?”

“You are an Orsini, Marcelo. That makes you a suspect. Look at the conclusion that you drew yourself, coming here to talk to me.”

I looked down. I understood the way I could be a suspect theoretically, but
really
, I could never. I would
never
do that to Sophie, regardless of what our fathers were quarreling about. That was low, and there was no way she would be able to take the news that that had happened to her father and that I had done it. I would never do anything to Sophie knowing that it would hurt her. I loved her. I would tell my father that, but he wouldn’t care. He just wanted the truth to come out before something ugly came of the uncertainty surrounding the murder.

Who the hell would do this? There were other people who hated Frank, but would anyone really go to those levels? If they knew anything about Frank, then they knew that he and my father were working together now. They must have. That meant that they had to know that going after him would have some sort of impact on my father and me. But
who
?

“Marcelo?”

I looked up and saw my father looking at me.

“How far along is she?” he asked.

That
was sudden. I realized that we hadn’t actually told anybody yet that we were expecting. She wasn’t showing yet, and though she was getting sick in the mornings and she had told me that her tits hurt sometimes or whatever, she didn’t look pregnant. It was still really early on, too early to start telling people because this was still the time when pregnancies sometimes
terminated
themselves. That was the word that Sophie had used when she had explained it to me, and it scared me shitless. I didn’t want our baby to be
terminated
.