Kiss Of Death: A Dark Mafia Romance

Nero

“Fuck. Fuck!” I roar.

I knew she’d try something, but a car? I didn’t expect to have to tranq her behind the wheel of a fucking car. Her head falls back against the tarmac and her arms go limp, falling to her sides. The way she was clutching her stomach scares the shit out of me.

“Get the doctor. Now!” Blood coats her face, pouring from the wound at her hairline and streaking her white-blonde hair red.

I pick her up and climb into the back of the SUV, cradling her against my chest as Gio drives back to the house. I knew she’d try something, so I deliberately left late. Low and behold, I’m barely a couple of miles down the road when I get the call. We pull up to the house. The gate and half my Maserati are all over the road. They’ve cleared enough of a path to allow us through and Gio pulls right up to the front door.

I climb out and walk through the house to my office where I lay her on one of the sofas. Gio follows a minute later and holds out a wad of bandages and dressings to me. I press them against her forehead, trying to stem the bleeding. There’s nothing else I can do.

“She’s crazy,” Gio grumbles, dragging his hand through his hair in agitation.

“Not like I really expected her to do what she was told.”

“Nero, she’s pregnant with your kid! You can’t give her free reign. She’s too unstable.” He shakes his head. “She has no sense of self-preservation. She’ll kill that baby.”

“Enough!” I clench and release my fist before pressing it to my forehead. He doesn’t understand Una. I don’t agree with her. I can’t let her do it, but I see why she honestly believes she’s doing the right thing. I get it. I get that she’s trying to be selfless.

Gio walks out of the room without another word. He sees things differently. He thinks that women should be protected, children even more so. Una confounds all of that. I brush her hair away from her face, staring at unsettlingly innocent features before my gaze drifts to her stomach. I slide my hand beneath the material of her shirt and press my palm to her bare skin. Is he or she okay in there? Are they hurt? I don’t know what I expect, a sign or something. I feel nothing. The doctor said the sedative wouldn’t hurt the baby, but the car crash…There’s a knock at the door, and Gio comes back in followed by the doctor. The older man takes my place and removes the dressing, inspecting her head, “This will need stitches.”

“You need to check the baby first.”

He opens his mouth to argue but thinks better of it. A machine is set up before he squeezes some gel onto Una’s stomach, before rolling the hand held device over her skin. The little screen shows a black and white image, but that sound… the thwap, thwap, thwap of a heartbeat fills my ears and I relax. “Everything looks fine,” he says.

I release the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. How can something that was never on my radar suddenly feel so crucial? How can this tiny thing I’ve never even met, seem like the most important thing in the world? Nothing scares me, but this terrifies me.

I take a seat on the couch across from Una, elbows propped on my spread thighs as I watch the doc stitch her up. She’s so still. Too still. Even in sleep, Una is always restless, haunted by nightmares and expecting a strike at any time. The longer I watch her, the more hopeless this situation seems. How do you cage something like her? Wild, deadly, savage. How do you keep a butterfly in a jar without suffocating it?

I want her and I want that baby, but she doesn’t want it, so where does that leave us? Will I be forced to choose? Will I have to let her go in order to keep my child? I drag my hand down my face and stand, pacing as the doctor tapes a dressing over her head and stands up. “Keep an eye on her. She should wake up in an hour or so. If she’s asleep much longer than that, call me.”