The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance (24 page)

“I’m okay. I wanted to know whether everything was fine. I’ve had a patrol around your house since Frank passed. You haven’t had any trouble, or noticed anything suspicious have you?”

She was silent for a beat.

“Oh, I thought you knew,” she said to me.

Knew
? Knew what. That was never good. I didn’t like not knowing something that I was expected to know because that meant that someone was a step ahead of me—and that was always a bad thing.

“What’s been going on? Has something happened?”

“Well,” she sighed, “I didn’t think to tell you sooner because I thought it would blow over by itself before it got to be an actual problem.”

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck raise.

“What do you mean? Mrs. Dandolo, are you in trouble?” I asked.

She made a sound that sounded like a yawn. She had completely tapped out. I didn’t think she had a single part of her that still cared what happened to her since her husband had died.

“I mean, I’ve been
hearing
things, Marcelo. There was a man who came by the house offering his condolences. He said that Vinny needed to watch his back.”

Vincenzo was one of Sophie’s uncles. I closed my eyes and rubbed them with my hands.
God
dammit
.

“He’s been calling me. He says he’s gotten phone calls warning him that someone is after him. That his brother was first and that he will be next,” she said.

“Does he know who the phone calls are from?” I asked her.

“No. Whoever is contacting him never said.”

I wanted to tell her that I could do something about it. It was too late to try and tell her that I knew all this shit and I was already on it. I
wasn’t
. Someone had cut me off at the pass, and that person was trying to get my attention. That had to be it.
I
was at the center of all of this because what the hell else could be the answer? Sophia was innocent. It was her involvement with me that caused her all this stress. I told her mother that I would look into it and immediately placed a call to Louis.

How many people were going to have to die because Sophia and I had gotten married? The number currently was one—and that was already too many. There wasn’t enough time to call a meeting, but I could talk to Louis. I could have asked him to come to the house but
Puglia
was closer.

He showed up about fifteen minutes after I had arrived.

“What can you tell me about Vincenzo Dandolo?” I asked him, skipping the niceties completely.

“Mrs. Dandolo’s been getting guys telling her that he’s next,” he said simply. I tried very hard not to let my outrage show on my face. In knew I was on my way out, but when did that mean they would completely leave me out of the loop?

“Why is this the first that I’ve heard about this?” I asked him.

“We couldn’t come to you before we had a name or at least an idea of who it was,” he said. He had a point. Regardless, I was mad.

“Well, what's taking you so long?” I snapped. I had no right to ride his ass about this, but this was serious. “That’s my wife’s uncle. When were you planning on finding out who it is? Hm? After he was dead? After her mother was dead? After
she
was dead?” I asked.

“We’re doing the best we can, boss. Whoever it is, it’s not someone we’ve dealt with before.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it isn’t one of the likely suspects. The guys you can bank on to be up to something just ain’t involved. It’s someone new. Someone different.”

I sat back in my seat and swore.

“Whoever it is, I expect you to tell me soon. You can't act like this isn’t urgent. I need answers.”

I let Louis go and made my way back to my car. This was going to be a lot harder than I originally thought. My phone rang suddenly. I picked the phone up and saw it was Sophia. I was surprised,
pleasantly
surprised. The last two months had been hellish for her; it was good that she wanted to talk to me. I wanted to talk to her. The slight feeling that something was wrong ran through me as I picked the call up.

“Babe?”

“Marcelo?” It was good to hear her voice. It was hard to feel like she was still there a lot of the time because she was so depressed. I hated seeing her like that, and to be honest, it was
hard
. She wasn’t there, and I didn’t want to use that as an excuse to try and get what I needed from another person, but it was still difficult. She was doing what she could, and I couldn’t imagine what she was going through. I hadn’t lost
my
father, she had. She was also coming off the drama with the pictures and Alana. She didn’t deserve all of this. If anything, I was going to find the guy who had done this to her so that I could break his neck personally.

“How are you, Sophie. Is everything okay?” I asked.

“You won’t guess who just came to visit.” She was right, I couldn’t. Had she had someone over? Was it Elena? She sounded different than she had been sounding lately, a little more
alive
if you know what I mean. All the same, the way she said it made my guard rise; something made me feel that I wouldn’t like what she was about to tell me.

“It was Bachelorette number one, Alana.”

I rolled my eyes. Something really had to be said for Alana’s determination. Now I was less inclined to call it determination and more inclined to call it
obsession
. Obsession with me and Sophia and the life that she thought she was going to get as my wife. She was really a piece of work. After the pictures? After sending pictures of her and I having sex with the intention of breaking up my marriage, she still felt she had any right to walk her ass into our home for any reason?

After clearing up the picture situation with Sophie, I had talked to her—on the phone because I didn’t want to see her again.
One more thing
. One more act of harassment towards my wife or to me and the police were getting involved. It didn’t even matter what. Whatever we had to do to get her legally obligated to leave us the fuck alone, that was what it was going to be. She was more than a pest. She was endangering my marriage and she was stressing Sophia out. If anything happened to Sophie and the baby because of her, I wouldn’t know what to do. She had begun calling me again, and I had blocked her number because it was no longer a number I needed for any reason.

She might have been able to be my friend at one point, but she had shown that she was definitely not. Sophia didn’t care for her, and it wasn’t like she’d be the person either one of us would think to call if we ever needed a babysitter in the future, or wanted a friend to housesit for us in case we traveled. No. She was most likely fucking around again, trying to start trouble—and I couldn’t have it.

“She was asking for you, screaming that you weren’t getting back to her, and she was mad about it. But then she saw my stomach and she suddenly ran away. She didn’t know?”

“Nope,” I said. “Why would she. She isn’t a friend or family.” In reality, very few people knew. I had ended up telling my father when I saw him, but otherwise, just our mothers knew. It wasn’t something that needed to be broadcasted, not that I wasn’t proud and happy about it. I was.
Other
people
, however, might not be—and that wasn’t a risk that I was about to take with Sophia or with the baby.

“Could you come back home?” she asked. If Sophie had wanted me to come to her and she was half way around the world—right then—I would have done it. This was what it was about. She was my family now. She was my world and whatever she needed, I was going to do it.

“I’ll be right there.”

Sophia

I couldn’t explain it, but Alana’s visit, or rather the conversation I’d had with Marcelo afterward had had a revitalizing effect on me. I wouldn’t say that I was happy now, but it
had
cheered me up. It was a little petty, but I liked to think that he was on my side. Of course, he was on
my
side, but more than that, he was opposed to Alana. I had expected nothing less, but it did feel good to hear him defend me. It had also felt good to see Alana’s face after I had told her about the pregnancy.

She looked like she had just seen a ghost. What the hell did she think was going to happen? I felt foolish even thinking a while ago that the stunt she pulled with the pictures had affected me so deeply. Did she really believe that she had the power to break us apart? I might not have had much faith in the relationship initially, but I did now. Marcelo had shown her—and he had shown me—whom he was here for…and it was not her.

I felt so good, I didn’t even want to go back to bed anymore. I tucked my phone in my waistband and went to the kitchen instead and looked through the cupboards and the fridge for something to prepare. I wanted to cook, to get something ready so Marcelo could sit with me and we could eat together.

There was close to nothing in the house that I could whip up into an easy meal. There was the usual food that Daniella would cook and put in the refrigerator and that would just have to do. Marcelo was going to be right home anyway. I wasn’t sure where he was, but he had said that he was coming. I chose a cold lasagna and set it on the counter while I preheated the oven.

I turned my head hearing the sound of a car pulling up to the house. I turned the oven off and went to the door. He was here. I opened the door up, hearing him walk up the steps to the door expecting to see him.

Only it was not Marcelo. It was Alana. She was back—and this time, she had brought
reinforcements
with her. In her leather gloved hand was a pistol. My immediate instinct was to raise my hands in the air on either side of my head.

“Get inside,” she said. I backed into the house—and she quickly followed me, closing the door behind her.

What fresh hell was this? It took me a second to register what it was that she started to yell at me.

“Sit down,” she shrieked. I walked over to the dining table slowly, still facing her. “No, bring the chair here.” I lowered an arm to drag the chair across the floor, into the great room and sat. My hands went protectively over my belly.

“Alana, what’s going on?” I asked her.

“Where’s Marcelo?” she demanded. Was she a toddler, did she only know how to say that one phrase?

“He’s not here. Alana, you don’t have to do this,” I said.

She laughed at me. She shrugged out of the trench coat she was wearing to reveal the same dress she had shown up in for her first visit.

“Don’t have to do what? All I want to do is wait for him. That’s it. We can do it together,” she said sweetly.

I struggled to keep my breathing level. I couldn’t succumb to the panic and the stress. I
couldn’t
. That would have been potentially disastrous. I kept my eye on Alana. She was walking around the room watching me, keeping the gun pointed in my direction like a cat, stalking its prey.

“What do you want to talk to Marcelo about?” I asked her.

She smiled serenely and swung the gun around, motioning with her hands.

“Oh, I think the time for talking with Marcelo is over. I’m not stupid; he has nothing to say to me anymore. I know that. I don’t want to
talk
to him.”

“Then what do you want to do?” I asked.

My overactive imagination steered me towards every horrible thing conceivable. She had a gun with her. She would not have brought it if she didn’t intend to make use of it somehow. But how was somehow? What did she want to do and, to be honest, did I really want to know? If she wanted to kill me, she was going about it all wrong. The best time to have done it was when I opened the door for her. She would have had a close range shot, I wouldn’t have had time to run, and she would have been able to make as quick an escape as she had made an entrance. Instead, she had asked me to sit in a chair and wait for Marcelo to come home.

“Sophie, I’m going to kill him.”

If it was not obvious that Alana was completely off her rocker before, it sure was now. She had said it so calmly like she was answering the question, ‘
How is the weather today?’
She laughed looking at me.

“Did you think I just came to say hi?”

“That probably would have been a better scenario… what do you want with me?”

“You’re going to watch.”

I sat in my seat, feeling hot and cold all at once. She wasn’t bluffing. The woman was dead serious. What the hell was happening? How had this entire day turned into
TRUE
CRIME
all of a sudden? I had to do something, but what? It wasn’t like she had me tied down or anything, but she
was
holding a gun and she was clearly agitated enough to do something crazy if I pushed her. I was pregnant besides; I couldn’t risk her squeezing that trigger —on purpose or by accident.

I slid a hand into my waistband where my phone was. Calling somebody was too risky. She would be able to hear their voice and know what was going on. I was getting out of this alive. If I could keep her talking, she would be distracted. I turned on the voice memo function on my phone as discreetly as I could as she walked over to the window by the door to see who was outside.

“Are you going to kill me, too?” I asked her. She walked towards me. She looked too calm, like a sociopath.

“Maybe.”

“Why are you doing this, Alana?”

“Don’t you see? This is all your fault.”

“What did I do? We don’t even know each other.”

“That’s right, we don’t. And you didn’t even know Marcelo three months ago when the two of you got married.”

That was what this was about. Shit. Hell really
has
no fury.

“Our marriage was arranged. There was nothing either of us could have done.”

“Yes, there
was
. What the hell kind of woman allows herself to be married off like that? What kind of man lets his father pick his woman for him? You could have said no. Both of you. You
should
have said no, but you didn’t.”

“Why does that make you so angry?”

“Because you ruined
everything
,” she said. “You think this is something special between you and Marcelo? Do you think that in these three months you’ve captured his heart and transformed him?”

I was silent. Honestly, I was scared of what she would say.

“Three months Sophia. A lot of things can happen in three months but nothing meaningful. Nothing real. Has Marcelo ever told you how far he and I go back?”

“I know you two used to be in a relationship.”

“We dated for years and knew each other even longer than that.
Years
, Sophie. That is what Marcelo and I have. Years and a history. You saw the pictures,” she said, smiling. “The two of you have three months and a late abortion.”

My hands balled into fists. I wanted to lunge at her and kick her in the mouth. I had never been violent in my life—and this was not a good time to start—but she was getting one more chance.

“Why didn’t you two get back together?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“We did. Every time that we broke up, we got back together again. Sometimes it was after a few weeks. Sometimes months went by before we would reconcile. But we always got back together.
Always
… until you showed up.”

She fixed her glare on me and used the gun to point in my direction.

“Suddenly, he can’t see me anymore because he’s making preparations for the wedding. He’s getting married to some woman he’s hardly spoken to for ten minutes, and even better, I’m invited to the wedding if I want to come. By the way, that gown did
nothing
for you. You aren’t tall or thin enough to really do it justice.”

I bristled. If she wanted the gown, it was right upstairs. She could try it on and see if it looked better on her bony body than it had on mine.

“You think it would have been you if it wasn’t me?”

“Of course. Who else was there who could be Marcelo’s wife? I was the one he kept coming back to… you know what that means Sophie? It means that despite
everything
, he loved me. He would play around, let his eye wander, but he always knew where I was and always came back to find me.”

Wow
.

The woman had barged into my home and held me at gunpoint. She had called me fat and short; she had slandered my unborn child; and she had told me that my marriage was a joke, but now, now I just felt
sorry
for her. How could she not have seen what she was to Marcelo? He didn’t keep going back to her. She was just the one who was always available so he kept her in rotation. He could rely on her desperation for him, and he had exploited her for it. I wasn’t going to excuse his behavior—it was awful that he had strung her along—but it was incredible that she hadn’t realized it.

“You really love him, don’t you?” I said gently.

She barked out a derisive laugh.

“I don’t
love
him, Sophia. He’s my soulmate. He’s the only person for me, and I’m the only one for him. We were meant to be together, and there is nothing that is going to stand in our way.”

“Alana, we’re
married
and expecting a baby.”

“I realize. God, do you know how many years I have been trying to tell Marcelo that this is what is right for us. Our destiny? He’s so stubborn. You know that I suppose. If you hadn’t come along, we would be together again and it would just be a matter of time before I was Mrs. Orsini.”

“I’m sorry that it didn’t work out for you, Alana, I really am, but this, killing him isn’t going to solve the problem.”

“The problem is
you
. If he’s gone, then you won’t be married to him anymore. Simple.”

“If I’m the problem, then why do you want to kill Marcelo?”

“Because you left me no fucking choice,” she said sharply. “You… you are a hard egg to crack Sophia Dandolo,” she said, pointing the gun at me and purposefully calling me by my maiden name. “Nothing rattles you, does it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought the pictures would do it. I thought that you wouldn’t believe Marcelo if he told you that they were old because, hey, what reason did you have to trust the guy? You barely knew him. But no. You stayed. That was when I knew I had to do something drastic.”

“What did you do?” I asked her.

“Your little show at your dad’s funeral, sitting when everyone else was standing and hanging onto Marcelo like that was frankly embarrassing,” she snapped.

“You were there?”

“You can thank me for the chance to wear that black
Diane von Furstenberg
. I know Marcelo got it for you, he has great taste, even if he doesn’t have the greatest model to dress up.”

I felt like the pit of my stomach was being consumed by its own acid.

“You didn’t.”

“I
did
. Your daddy was a sitting duck, Sophia. He didn’t even try and defend himself.”