by Nicole Fox
After five minutes or so, I lean close to him and whisper, “You’re going to make it right, Dad. Don’t cry now. Save your strength. You can make it right.”
“Do you really believe that?” he mumbles.
I don’t. That’s the truth. I don’t really believe it at all. But I’ve also never seen him cry like this. It’s scary to see a man like Dad, a man who was always strong, whatever else he was, break down like this. “Yes,” I lie. “I believe it. You can do it, Dad. I know you can. I promise you can.”
When that doesn’t work, Fink kneels down so that he’s staring into Dad’s eyes. “Listen to me,” he says. “And look at me.” Dad raises his head, staring into Fink’s stern face. “You’ve made some mistakes in your life, maybe some mistakes so bad you don’t think there’s any way of clawing your way back, so you might as well keep on going, keep on makin’ the same mistakes because, fuck it, what’ve you got to lose? But there’s always a way back. You see, most folks are different to you and me. Most folks are good people. They’ll forgive, and what’s even crazier, they’ll forget. You’re not young, but you’re not old, either. You can claw your way back, but you have to be strong. You have to be a man. You have to fight.”
That gets through to Dad. He wipes his eyes and stands up straight, adjusting his jacket. “I’ll fight,” he says. “I’ll prove it to you, Nancy. You don’t have to take my word for it.”
I follow him to the door. He stands there, looking uncertain, and then opens his arms. “A hug for your old man?”
I hug him; it’s the first time since I was a little girl, as far as I can remember. It’s awkward, and doesn’t feel completely right, but it’s a start. He leaves, stomping down the hallway with drunken steps.
“Thank you,” I say to Fink. “That was really helpful.”
“I don’t know if I was talking to him or myself,” Fink admits. “But if I did some good, then that’s all right.”
“You did,” I assure him. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him, but I want him to get better.”
“Sometimes people fall into a rut that lasts for years,” Fink says. “I reckon half the fellas at in the club are in a rut. They were strapped for cash or couldn’t control their tempers and so they joined a place that made them big and important, and then maybe they wanted to get out but they couldn’t, ’cause the life had them. And next year and next year . . . until decades have gone by and they haven’t done shit. I never thought I’d say this, Nancy, but sometimes not fighting is the brave thing to do. Hell, I’m fighting some inner war so I don’t have to fight for real. Who the fuck would’ve guessed that?”
“What will you do now?” I ask. “Will you be my house husband?”
He laughs, shaking his head. “I’d be dead within a year if I did that. No, I reckon I’ll find a job as a mechanic wherever we end up. Plus, I’ve got some cash saved.”
“How much?” I ask.
He whispers it to me.
It’s a large sum, enough to put a deposit on a house with change.
“Aren’t you a little squirrel, stowing your nuts?”
“I’ve been called many things in my life, but a squirrel ain’t one of them.”
The apartment buzzer sounds. I jump to my feet and go to the intercom, praying for pizza and not Dad.
A few minutes later, Fink and I are watching TV and feasting on two large pizzas. If this isn’t home, I don’t know what is.
Epilogue
Nancy
“I can’t tell you how proud I am,” Mom says, bobbing little Sebastian up and down on her knee. We’re in the wedding dress store, me in a dress which cuts short at the knee, flashing a sliver of thigh, the sort of dress I wouldn’t have entertained before I met Fink. But I love it; it’s stylish and sleek. “Really,” she goes on. “This little guy.” She tickles Sebastian’s cheek. The two-month-old just smiles blandly up at her. “And now the wedding and . . . Everything’s really working out, isn’t it?”
“Everything’s working out,” I agree, spinning in the dress. “It better be. I’ve spent more time in the gym than I want to think about, losing all that baby blubber.”
“Baby blubber.” Mom giggles. “It was worth it, though, wasn’t it?”
I lean down and kiss Sebastian on the forehead. “Of course, it was.”
I get changed into my normal clothes and buy the dress, and then Sebastian cries in that way which means he’s hungry. “Where can we go?”
“There’s a café around the corner,” Mom says.
We walk through the LA sun, Sebastian crying in his stroller, and then go to the back of the café, where nobody can see us. I bring Sebastian to my breast and let him feed. He quiets down.
“Are you nervous?” Mom asks.
“About the wedding? Not really. I think Fink is more nervous. I know I want to be married to him. I’ve known for a long time.”
“And he doesn’t?”
“It’s not that he doesn’t. It’s just that he gets scared he’s not good enough for us. I keep telling him it’s silly, but you can’t just shake someone out of a way of thinking about things they’ve had since they were a kid. This is deep stuff for him. Anyway, we’re in love, and when he’s not nervous, he can’t wait. He’s like an excited little kid. He keeps calling me “my wife” even when I tell him that he has to wait.”
Sebastian finishes feeding. I put him in the stroller next to the table and rock him back and forth with one hand.
“I’m sure everything will work out absolutely fantastic,” Mom says. “Everything’s in order. The flowers, the music, the catering—”
Mom’s list is interrupted by my cellphone. It’s a number I don’t recognize.
“Nancy?” Dad says, his voice cleaner than I’ve ever heard it. He doesn’t slur. He sounds wide awake.
“Dad?”
“I’m calling from the manager’s phone,” he says. “She was nice enough to let me use it. I just wanted to say good luck for tomorrow and I’m really sorry I can’t be there, okay? When I get out of this place, I’ll come and say hello to you and Fink and the little guy . . . if that’s okay with you, of course. I don’t want to presume.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Dad.”
“I haven’t touched a drink in eleven months,” he says. “I’m looking into work right now. That’s why I’m in the manager’s office. All the computers are down except for hers. I’m looking into security work. Get back into the swing of things. Only be a better man this time around. What do you think?”
I can tell he’s hungry for my approval.
“I think that’s great,” I tell him.
“Okay! Great! Well, the next time I see you, I’ll have my one-year chip!”
“How is he?” Mom asks after a pause.
“Okay. Getting better.” I fill her in.
“I hardly want to say it. I don’t want to jinx it. But I think he actually might be getting better. He’s never gone this long before. He’s never even come close to going this long before.”
“I know.” I smile, and it feels stolen. We can’t smile about Dad; our hopes will just be dashed. But Mom’s right. He’s never gone this long before. “I feel the same. I know it’s dangerous, but my hopes are flying high right now.”
Mom touches my hand. “Just focus on tomorrow. Focus on making your family happy and peaceful for that little guy.”
Fink
After all this time, I still get a damn funny feeling when I see her, especially today. Dressed in that sexy white dress, a dress that shows just enough thigh to get my mind working, walking down the aisle with music playing, and her family smiling from her side and Sal and his wife smiling from my side. Her mother walks her down the aisle to me.
I think about last night when crazy thoughts of running went through my head. Not because I don’t want to marry her—I want to marry her more than anything in the world—but because I didn’t know if I deserved it. Well, I still don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know
. But I can spend the rest of my life trying to find out, trying to make the answer yes.
She smiles at me radiantly, her makeup highlighting her big eyes, her full lips.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hey,” she whispers in return, with a cute giggle.
We go through the ceremony until we get to the fateful moment, the moment my entire life hinges upon. I glance into the crowd and spot Seb, smiling with his gummy mouth, pawing at Cheryl’s chin. My heart floods with warmth, warmth unlike anything I have ever known, warmth so stunning I want to wrap my arms around Nancy and Seb and protect them for the rest of time.
“I do,” I say. “I do, I do, I do.”
Nancy is crying, tears streaming down her cheeks, cutting lines through her makeup. I take her by the shoulders and lower her in my arms. “I’ve got you,” I whisper, kissing her softly on the lips. “I’ll always have you.”
“I love you so much,” she whispers through her tears.
It’s only when we stand up that I realize everyone is clapping. Sal is crying just as much as Nancy, maybe more, and Seb is clapping his hands together in imitation of the adults around him.
I wipe a tear from my eye.
THE END
***
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Knocked Up by the Killer: A Hitman Baby Romance
By Nicole Fox
Killing is my business.
But f**king her will be the sweetest pleasure.
Her scumbag ex ran off, leaving a mountain of debt for her to deal with.
The thing is, I don’t give a damn about her sob story.
I care about one thing only:
Getting what I came for.
She doesn’t have the cash to fork over.
What she does have is a body I’m dying to claim.
So as long as I’m waiting around for her to make ends meet…
I might as well give myself a taste.
When I take her, she’s as delicious as I imagined.
And her pleading moans are music to my ears.
But then something else came along, something I never expected…
She got pregnant.
All of the sudden, her situation is out of control.
She’s got her billionaire mafia boss thirsting after her.
A killer’s baby in her belly.
And a multi-million-dollar debt hanging over her head.
If she wants to get out of this alive, she’ll have to do exactly what I tell her to.
Starting with this:
Get on your knees, darling.
Chapter One
Finn
There’s this diner in Brooklyn, all stainless steel and subway tile. Smells like five decades of grease. Worst coffee in the state. Bunch of old-timers sitting at the counter, flirting with the young waitresses, bitching about the weather or the price of gas or the situation in North Korea.
I like it because it’s anonymous. I don’t walk in here and incite fear; these people don’t know me, don’t know what I do. They don’t know about the crescent-shaped scar on my solar plexus, where a mark got me in a badly aimed jab for my heart. They don’t know I broke a bottle of Russian vodka over a guy’s head in a bar fight three nights ago.
No, here I’m just that guy who comes in once a week for a greasy, sloppy Reuben sandwich and some French fries. The waitresses flirt. I leave big tips.
Except today, I can’t fully enjoy my Reuben sandwich because my next mark is at the counter, waiting on a lunchtime takeout order. She’s the wife of my mark, actually, but that motherfucker skipped town without a trace and by God, I’ll get blood out of that turnip, even if it means I have to scare the shit out of his old lady.
She’s tall, with legs for days. That’s the first thing I notice. Long, toned legs in high heels meant only for fueling sexual fantasies. Long, dark hair in waves down her back. Full lips, sharp cheekbones. She’s almost too pretty to mess with. Almost.
She grabs her takeout bag from the waitress and heads for the door. I throw some cash on the table and wave as I wander toward the door, pretending to look at my phone as I wander after my mark.
It’s a nice day in Brooklyn. Blue skies, low humidity. There are nannies out walking kids in strollers, people jogging. This woman, Selena Russell, walks quickly on those heels, stopping in front of a five-story, brick office building about four blocks from the diner. She pauses for a minute before going in, tilting her head back, exposing that beautiful face to the sun for a moment, oblivious to everything around her, including the pissed-off loan shark snow only a half a block away.
Selena opens her eyes after a long pause, turning to head into the building. As soon as she’s inside, I check the building roster on the front door. A doctor’s office, a lawyer’s office, and there it is, the offices of The Kovolov Company. Third-floor home of a Russian-owned shipping company. No way that woman works for some doctor or lawyer, not in those shoes. Not with that loser of a husband. Nope, Kovolov seems more like her style.
And good. If she’s working for Kovolov, then she’s making plenty of money. Sergei Kovolov pays top dollar, especially to pretty girls who’ll suck his cock while he counts his billions.
The building’s nice—I’ve been here before, I realize, to get payment from the CEO of an Internet start-up who couldn’t get the venture capital to get his business off the ground. He came to me for three times the interest and then tried to move the company out of town before paying me. I got my money; he got a broken nose. I thought I was quite generous, frankly.
This building has an underground parking garage, so I’ll just head on down and wait for Miss Russell to finish her workday before I confront her for her husband’s money. I’m not a fan of messing up women, but I’m also not about to let the Russells walk off and leave me holding the bag on this loan. I’ve got bills to pay and a business to run, and it runs on people making good on their debts. The husband may be MIA, but Selena is right here and she benefitted from what her husband borrowed, so she’s fair game.
So, I’ll just wait. I’m a patient man, and I’m looking forward to getting what’s mine.
***
Selena
While I scarfed down my lunch hours ago, Sergei’s sits untouched on his desk. I’ve only worked here for a couple of weeks but I’ve learned that when my boss doesn’t touch his lunch, it’s about to be a very long afternoon for us both.
His mood has gotten darker and darker since I came in this morning. When I arrived, he was all smiles. Now, his face is red and contorted with anger. My desk is right outside his office, my sightline straight to where he stands behind his desk, hand in his dark-blond hair as he yells in Russian. He’s been yelling in Russian for over an hour. I don’t speak it, but the beginning of the conversation was in English, and from what I gather, a rival company hijacked one of Sergei’s shipping vessels.
I suppose I’d be mad, too, if some rogue company pirated my shipment. Sergei’s shipments are usually worth millions. Sometimes he ships rugs and furniture, sometimes antiquities, sometimes alcohol. Sometimes, by his own admission, “contraband.”
I don’t keep the books, though, so I never ask about the shipments. I just field his calls and emails, set up his appointments, and get his coffee and lunch. I’m just the secretary.
Sergei’s voice gets louder and louder as the calls continue. He speaks entirely in Russian but I know things aren’t good. He bangs his hand on the wood desktop. At one point he throws his coffee cup against the wall. It shatters, and I’m left feeling honestly afraid of him. It’s not as if he’s taking this situation out on me, but I’m the only other human in the office. He’s bound to set his crosshairs on me at some point, take his frustration out on the closest warm body. That’s how my
husband always acted. He’d come home in a foul mood and it wouldn’t take long before I was paying the price for whatever the world had done to fuck him that day.
Fuck Matt Russell, the coward. He pissed off too many people and instead of handling his problems like a big boy, he ran off like a little coward on the playground. Who the fuck knows where he is now? And good riddance. But he’s definitely left me in a financial predicament. See, he never wanted me to work. Always wanted a pretty trophy wife, wanted me to spend my time working out, staying pretty. And what did pretty get me? Nothing.
I hate to ever admit that my mother was right about anything, but she hated Matt from day one. Called him a “bum.” I have since called him much worse.