The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance (26 page)

“Baby, I have to talk to you about something,” he said to me, as I straddled his hips. I kissed him, making him unable to continue. “Sophie. Listen. We have to talk about your dad’s business.”

“Shh. Not now, Marcelo. I want you to make love to me,” I said. He looked at me as if he was torn, but his hands gripped my hips, and I could feel his erection growing and pressing into my thigh. I kissed him slowly before pulling my tank top up over my head and unhooking my bra. His eyes dropped to my breasts, and I heard him sigh. They had been more sensitive since I had gotten pregnant and were already a little bigger. He cupped one in his hand and ran the pad of his thumb over the hard nipple. I hissed as he did it again before covering the nipple with his mouth and sucking it.

The months of misery, confusion, and danger had weighed on me and all I wanted was to
feel
him. I wanted to feel his weight, his passion, and his desire. I wanted to feel connected with something real and someone who loved me when everything around me seemed to be out of control. He repeated the action with the other nipple and started undoing the buttons on his shirt.

I reached down into his lap and started on his pants. His erection was straining through his underwear, and my urgency was making my hands clumsy. I stood up and pulled my shorts and panties off before mounting him again. He held me by the waist and picked me up, positioning me on the couch underneath him. He slid into me slowly, letting me feel every single inch. He was so
big
. He was so thick. His cock felt amazing inside me.

I wanted him to pound me like he hadn’t touched me in weeks. I wanted it dirty and rough, but he didn’t. His weight pressed down on me gently as he slowly and rhythmically drove into me with his dick. My eyes shut as the sensation intensified. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him closer into me. Everything faded into nothingness around me, and I forgot the fear and uncertainty I had been feeling all day. All I felt was the man I loved making love to me.

I started crying again. He wasn’t hurting me. I was just overwhelmed. The physical pleasure and arousal I was experiencing just heightened the passion and love I felt for him. My breathing got faster and faster as I neared orgasm. He picked up his speed a little, pushing me. I flattened a palm on his back, feeling his hard muscles working underneath. I let out a strangled cry as my orgasm exploded through me. He sped up as I clenched down around his cock, also climaxing before slowing down and then easing himself out of me. The moment was perfect. Whatever he wanted to talk about could wait till morning. We made love again before falling asleep in each other's arms.

***

I was making pancakes in the morning when Marcelo came into the kitchen. The smell and taste of eggs made me completely sick during the pregnancy so I had switched Marcelo’s usual scrambled eggs in the morning to flapjacks. He didn’t seem to mind. He kissed me before pouring himself a cup of coffee. I sat down with him picking at a piece of grapefruit. I knew what was coming. I had wanted to stave it off the night before, but there was no getting around it now. It had to be discussed.

“How are you feeling today?” he asked me.

“Alright,” I said. “What did you want to tell me last night?”

“Your father’s business… his men have been talking about it since he passed, but I didn’t want to bring it to you immediately because you took his passing so hard. Someone needs to take command.”

“So why don’t they pick someone?”

“There already is someone. You. You’re his only child. You’re the heir to his business.”

I frowned. There were a lot of things I had inherited from my parents—and even things I wanted to inherit, like my mother’s fine crystal, but
this
?
This
I wanted no part of.

“A bunch of guys are gonna listen to
me
?”

“They have to. They were your father’s sworn followers—and now that he’s gone, they’re yours.”

“I don’t know the first thing about this kind of stuff. I don’t want to get into it, Marcelo. We have a baby coming and it's too much for me. The danger, the crime… I don’t want it.”

“It’s not the best situation, but you and I were both raised by men who were mobsters. It might not be that wholesome, but families have been living like this for years.
Our
families have been living like this for years.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know what to do. What should I do?” I said to him.

“The chances of this life becoming part of our pasts is nearly impossible,” he said. “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless we make a clean break. All the way out, you
and
I.”

I thought about it for a second.

“That would mean you relinquishing your territory completely and other people taking over.”

“Yes,” he said simply.

It had never occurred to me that this life was something that Marcelo enjoyed or even loved. I always thought of it as something that was part of his family history, which he participated in because of tradition.
Could
I ask him to let it go? Would he if I did? What would that mean for us if he got out?

“Do you want to give it all up?” I asked him. He paused before answering.

“I want a safe and happy life with you and our child. I want to get that—and I don’t care how we get it. I want you to be happy.”

“I don’t want to ask you to do something you don’t want to do.”

“I can’t make all the decisions myself, Sophie. It isn’t my place. I have to think about you and the baby, too. Whatever you decide is what we will do.”

He cleared his coffee cup and stood up. He kissed me on the forehead.

“Take your time. You don’t have to answer immediately.”

He left soon after, leaving me in the house. He had asked me to take my time, but I already knew what I wanted. It was a no-brainer. There was a time in my life when I had had no idea that these things were going on around me and that was the time that I had felt safest. Ignorance was bliss—and even though I couldn’t be ignorant about it, I wanted that bliss back.

I wanted out. I wanted nothing to do with all this shit. That was my answer.

Our future was wide open. Anything could happen but removal of the criminal element meant a lot of bad things that could happen just because of the association were removed as threats. Our lives would be inherently safer if we were no longer involved—and that was what I wanted. I wanted us to be safe.

Marcelo had told me that he would do whatever I wanted, but how much had he thought about it? I allowed myself to think about a future where we didn’t have to watch our backs. It was nice. I liked it… I hoped Marcelo would like it, too.

Marcelo

One Month Later

The baby had affected Sophia and me in very different ways. The first was, of course, that
she
was the one carrying the child and I was not, meaning she was the one who was getting the odd food cravings, the increased libido, and the insane bodily changes that came with pregnancy.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still. I was anxious. I wanted and didn’t want the baby to be born right then just so I could relax. There was so much to do—and even though there were still a number of months left before the baby came, I was frantic. I wanted everything to be perfect for the baby’s arrival. We had to be settled somewhere, and we had to have everything we needed.

No dollar would be spared. The baby deserved the best of everything that money could buy. This was
my
kid we were talking about. Marcelo Orsini’s child was not going to do without.

It was possible that Sophia and I were better matched than we had initially thought because we came up with much the same idea concerning the future. She wanted me to leave the family business as well, and she wanted to move to somewhere that would be more suitable for raising a child. She had the New York suburbs in mind, but she wasn’t totally opposed to Europe. I managed to sway her towards my cause a little more when we flew to Rome and she saw the house that I had purchased for us.

The villa was about a ten minute drive from the city, meaning it was close but still a little quiet. It had a historic architectural style that had been preserved, but the inside of the house was modern and furnished to suit a
jet-setting young couple
like us. There was a pool outside and a lawn. Space. The kid could run around, learn to swim. We could get a dog. The perfect family home.

That was where we were, touring the property together for the first time when Sophia felt the baby kick. She had stopped in her tracks as we were headed up the stairs and held her stomach, which of course put me on high alert. My mind had gone from zero to one hundred in a heartbeat. I had thought that she was entering early labor or she was in some sort of pain and something was wrong with the baby. I didn’t know what the national emergency number was in the case of situations like this. I was not prepared to try and deliver a baby myself—and that baby was not coming. No way. It was way too soon.

The look on her face, which was one of shock and happiness, brought me back down. She had started crying almost immediately and grabbed my hand and placed it on her rounded belly. It was a few seconds and then I had felt it, too. Our baby, kicking up a storm. It was likely the most humbling and beautiful thing I had ever experienced. I knew the baby was there. I had seen it through the sonogram at the hospital, and I had been watching Sophie’s body grow and change with its development, but that was the closest that I could get to the kid as its father before the little guy or girl was born. Sophie was carrying the kid, so she felt it all the time, but the child and me, we were a little more separated.

I didn’t care that it was routine movement of the child and that it was completely normal. The baby was
talking
to me. The kid was talking to me and telling me that he or she really liked the house and couldn’t wait to move in.

I already loved Sophia with a force that scared me to think about, but feeling our baby move inside of her was the closest thing I could imagine to magic. It was magic, and it was love. Our love had manifested itself physically, and it was going to be born in four to five months in New York City. I couldn’t imagine anything so beautiful or so pure.

During one of our earliest fights, we were at
Puglia
and I had wanted her to leave. It was a whole ugly blowout both inside and outside of the restaurant, a moment I wanted to leave firmly in the past because she hadn’t deserved any bit of that. I had told her that I would buy her a restaurant if that was what it took to get her to leave
Puglia
like I was asking her to do.

It was only fair, a restaurant for a restaurant.

New York was a different city from Rome. Did the Italian food we ate back home even
pass
for Italian food here? The culture was different, the people were different, and life would be different—but I had a feeling that Sophia would be able to hack it.

It was a restaurant I had promised and it was a restaurant that she was getting. The international experience was going to be fantastic for her career. Her star had been blindingly bright in New York, and I was convinced because she was who she was and because she was my wife that she would bulldoze the competition and make them bow down. I knew what she had done for
Puglia
and it was only fair that she got to do the same with her own restaurant.

Even the original restaurant that we had fought about,
Puglia
, had passed into her possession, though it was through the sad situation that was her father’s passing. She became the owner, but she ended up bringing in family to manage it. Her mother was going to be her eyes and ears while we were far away starting a life together.

Of course, the timing was a little off.

We were expecting a baby, and we were about to get married again. I hadn’t wanted Sophia to work initially, but it was what she wanted to do. We were starting over. So many things were changing so why couldn’t that? After the baby was big enough, she could go back to work at a restaurant. Not just
a
restaurant but her own.

I liked to think of it as a sort of wedding present, either a belated one for the first wedding that we had had or one for the wedding that we were about to have. Planning had understandably been halted for a while following the difficulties that we had been through recently, but they were back up and running. The second wedding had been my suggestion, but it was another thing that I was going to let her take control of. It was supposed to be for us, but I wanted it to be for her.

Everyone knows the wedding day is
really
for the bride and all the rest of the people, including the groom just showed up. She deserved everything I could and couldn't give her. Whether she wanted to invite half of Manhattan or she wanted it to be just us, she was going to get it.

What we were looking for was somewhere to build the restaurant that would become Sophia’s. It would be a long road, getting architects and contractors, decorators and when it was ready, getting actual chefs and wait staff, but we had time. We weren’t in a hurry. We had a marriage to begin and a baby to have and raise in the meantime. We would be fine.

As far as New York went, it would still be a part of our lives yet. Say what you wanted about organized crime, but when you were at the very top of the command chain, the job was a versatile one. Sure it would be easier to work using New York as a base, but there were more important things we had to think about. My lieutenants were always a great team. They’d do just fine without me. New York was always just a phone call away. If my guys needed me, all they needed to do was ring. Sophia made the decision to break her father’s empire into pieces that she meted out among his men.

We were keeping the house, and we would move away to Rome after the baby had been born. After that, we would have a life across the sea, peaceful and safe. Perfect to raise our family. The house in New York was for when we decided we missed the
friendly
New York atmosphere. Our parents might want to see their grandchild sometimes—and this way they’d be able to.