Phantom's Baby: A Mafia Secret Baby Romance (Mob City Book 3)

by Holly Hart

  But the Val in the here and now, the one with Cara's hair on his chest and her trust in his plan – he was different. Better. He had something to live for that wasn't just an urgent, all-consuming thirst for revenge. He had a family: a woman – maybe one day a wife – and a child to care for. His dreams were different too.

  "You're awake."

  Her breath tickled my chest, at least what little of it that wasn't covered by her long hair like fallen auburn leaves in fall. The few short, dark hairs that stood uncovered upon it, like fir trees on a mountain range, danced in the wind.

  I held my tongue for a second. It wasn't just that I didn't know what to say – though I didn't. It was because I felt like speaking might ruin everything. This was the most perfect moment I could imagine, even more so because it came after two years in which I hadn't allowed myself to dream. And a dream was what this was – or at least what it felt like. A daydream in which everything was perfect…

  … perfectly poised to crumble in front of my eyes.

  I'd never lived this life. I'd never had a family – at least, not a normal one with a white picket fence and 2.4 kids. Now I had it all, with my whole life running ahead of me like a road to the Promised Land at the far edge of the desert, and it still felt like I was only one step from disaster.

  "I am."

  "What are you thinking?" she asked.

  I didn't know how to answer. I was thinking of Kitty, and her, and of running far, far away from this place: to a tropical island, maybe, where our biggest worry would be lathering enough sunscreen on the kid's skin. Or kids’ …

  Would you have another? With me?

  So I answered honestly. "I’m thinking of you; of how damn scared I am; of how sorry I am that I put you and Kitty in all this danger."

  Cara laughed. Her light voice tinkled like bells on a mountain breeze.

  "You didn't hear?"

  "What?"

  "I'm a crack shot, now," she giggled back, pinching a patch of skin on my chest between her thumb and forefinger. "You don't need to worry, because Cara's here to save you."

  I rolled onto my side and rested my head on my arm. Cara tumbled off me, and sat up with indignation on her face.

  "Hey! What was that for?"

  I reached over and grabbed her by the shoulder. I squeezed. "I'm serious Cara. This city's sick. It's no place for you and Kitty. There are things you –"

  “– things I what?" She replied sharply.

  "You don't know about…" I said, realizing my mistake. Then I decided to ignore it. If I couldn't trust Cara, then who could I trust? If I couldn't trust her, then what was the point in all of this – in any of this?

  "You remember Anatoly?"

  Cara scrunched up her face as she tried to remember. "You mean your man – the fat one?"

  I chewed on my lip. "I wish," I growled. "He's gone rogue. At least I think he has. Dimitri hasn't heard from him since we raided –, since the last mission. I think he sold us out. Just be careful okay?"

  "And that's why your stomach's cut to shit?" She asked pointedly, gently scratching one of her manicured nails against a closed-up cut on my belly.

  I cleared my throat hurriedly. "That's –. That's something else."

  "Uh huh," Cara replied, sounding less than convinced. But she didn't push the issue, and I couldn't have been more grateful. I didn't want to keep secrets from her. Not in the long-term. But right now, there were things I was ready to share, and things that I wasn't … What had happened with Rat in that warehouse fell decidedly in the second category.

  "So what are you saying, Val? You want us to leave? That’s just too bad because we're not going without you. I love you, Val whatever-the-hell-your-second-name-is, you hear that? I love you and you know something -- me and Kitty? We ain't going anywhere."

  I stared at her, stunned. Twenty-one years and no one in my life had ever told me they loved me. My mouth went dry and my fingers clammy all at once. I tried to speak, but all I could manage was a wide opened mouth. I stared at her like a character from a kid's cartoon, my eyes huge in my face.

  "You –" I croaked.

  She grinned, and the smile split her face from ear to ear with happiness. "I love you, Val. So you better just goddamn believe it."

  I swallowed and wiped my hands on the bed sheets. I couldn't understand why my body was betraying me. I didn't mind throwing myself into a fight with a feral dog, or taking on half a dozen men with nothing more than the knife strapped to my ankle, but this?

  This was more terrifying than any fight I'd ever undertaken – as part of a group or alone.

  Cara stared at me expectantly, and I wanted nothing more than to reach out and plant a kiss on her face. To throw her back down on the bed and take her for hours, to –

  She cleared her throat, and all of a sudden she seemed to be staring at me with just one eye. It was focusing on me, pressuring me, waiting for me to say something.

  "I –"

  "You what, Val?" She smiled wickedly.

  Don't make me say it, I squirmed. You know I mean it, please just don't make me say it.

  The silence built between us. I needed a way to hide from it. I reached over and rested my hand on her cheek. Her skin burns to the touch. Her fiery hair tickled the backs of my hands.

  "I love you, too," I whispered, so quietly even I could barely hear it.

  Cara cupped her hand around her ear. "I'm sorry, I didn't quite…"

  I growled and pushed her backwards against the bed, and the sheet she was holding around her body fell away, and my eyes feasted on her pale skin as she collapsed onto her back. Her eyes were opened wide, her breath ragged, and her puffy nipples rose and fell in disarray.

  "I said I fucking love you, Cara Winters. Is that loud enough for you?"

  Cara blinked and nodded. Her red hair fell like a fiery halo around her head, dancing like the flames of a campfire at night as she moved.

  My cock began to grow. I dipped my lips to her pinks and kissed her, and her body responded like a thoroughbred.

  Oh yes. I love you more than you can imagine.

  "I've got a baby girl, Val," Cara laughed. Turns out that telling a girl you love her is like an aphrodisiac. Fuck oysters, and the little blue pill; I've never seen a woman ride my cock like Cara just did. Christ, if I'd had my way she wouldn't have gotten off for hours; but she would have gotten off for hours.

  It took my brain a little while to respond. I was sex drunk, and intoxicated by her pussy.

  "You… Baby?" I shook my head in a cartoonish attempt to clear it.

  Cara picked through the mound of discarded garments on my bedroom floor. "Kitty, Val? She's a champion napper, but I can't just leave her on her own all day. She'll go crazy. Besides, I would too."

  Kitty.

  "Kitty!"

  I leapt out of bed and dived for the door. The last few hours had changed me somehow. No – holding Cara in my arms and contemplating how delicate she was, how fragile, and how all of a sudden I had something to lose, that was what had changed me. I was a family man now, for better or worse, for ri –

  "Val!"

  I stopped mid-stride, tried to turn and almost toppled over. I waved my arms in the air to regain my balance, and saw Cara's lips turn up into a smile. She tossed a crumpled white shirt at me. And I couldn't help but notice that her eyes danced across the cock now swinging from side to side between my legs. She cleared her throat.

  "Before you go and see my, I mean our daughter, Val – would you mind awfully putting on some clothes? Just because I like the heat you’re packing, doesn't mean it's age-appropriate just to walk around the apartment naked, you know?"

  My face flushed with embarrassment and I dived into the shirt to hide its redness. "Old habits," I mumbled from behind the material.

  Suitably dressed, and a little more restrained, I followed Cara down the corridor to Kitty's room. I was so excited I started hopping from foot to foot. I'll be honest, I'm not one for mumbo-jumbo, but you kn
ow what? Maybe that's just because I'd never been in love. I felt like saying those words to each other had changed everything. It was like all my life I'd had tinted-gray goggles strapped to my eyes, and today was the first day of freedom seeing in color – and living that tired old cliché: the first day of the rest of my life.

  "Geez – got ants in your pants much?" Cara grinned as she pushed open the bedroom door.

  "Mama!", Kitty gurgled as we walked into the room.

  "Hey baby," Cara cooed. "Did you have a nice nap?"

  Kitty pouted. "No more nap."

  Cara held her hands above her head. "Are you sure?" She teased.

  Kitty nodded.

  Then I couldn't help it. I plucked Kitty off the bed and turned her into an airplane above my head. I made engine sounds and she giggled, flight announcements and she laughed, and the whole while Cara just stared on, with a happy, sad smile on her face.

  "Why the long face, Ms. Winters?" I asked, cradling Kitty to my chest as she beat against it with her hands and fists, demanding that I restart the game.

  "It's nothing," she said quickly, turning to one side to hide her eyes.

  I lifted Kitty back up and pressed my ear right against her mouth. "Mama's sad," I whispered – quiet enough that Cara couldn't hear a word." Wanna cheer her up with me?"

  Kitty stared up at me with big, wide and serious eyes. She nodded and her rich, red-brown hair danced up and down like one of those tiny little backyard tornadoes disturbing a newly raked pile of crisp, dry freshly fallen leaves. I set her down on her feet, and we toddled over towards her mama, hand in hand.

  Kitty looked at me and I nodded, and as one we both grabbed one of her legs and held on tight. Cara started, and her hands jumped guiltily away from her face. "What are you two –?"

  She looked down.

  "Mama, why you cwying?" Kitty asked with an adorable, crestfallen expression on her face as she stumbled over the unfamiliar word.

  "It's just," she croaked. "It's just I'm so happy, you know?"

  A tear leaked out from her eye. I cocked my head and looked at her askance. "Are you sure?" I questioned disbelievingly. "Because from where Kitty and I are looking, you look like you're crying…"

  Cara shook her head and nodded it all at once, and the tear fell from her face and glinted in the light on its long way down. "No," she sniffed, holding one hand down to each of us. "I really, really am. I just never thought I would ever get to see you two together like this – and both so happy!" She did a little dance of excitement on both feet and almost sent Kitty flying.

  "Whoops," she snorted guiltily, grabbing hold of her daughter. "Sorry baby girl."

  I pulled myself to my feet. "What about me?" I asked with a false pout on my face.

  Cara raised an eyebrow. "You, mister, can look after yourself."

  I paused for thought. Her words echoed in my mind, and I caught myself shaking my head. “No,” I said quietly, gathering both of their soft, delicate bodies against my own. “I’m going to look after both of you.”

  18

  Cara

  Val's taken Kitty out for a daddy / daughter day.

  I just want to repeat that, because I'm giggling like a fucking schoolgirl.

  Val's taken Kitty out for a daddy / daughter day!

  Believe me when I say I love my kid. And Kitty's the best damn daughter that anyone could ask for. She never argues back, she never cries, whines or moans. She's an angel, and I'm not just saying that because I gave birth to her. But you can also believe me when I tell you that sometimes, just sometimes, a mom needs a break. It's a goddamn hard job, because even when everything's going absolutely right, it's only a heartbeat away from going completely wrong.

  If only I'd known how true that was.

  Ever since Val forced me to pull that trigger, I'd felt like a whole new woman. It felt like the kind of moment where I turned the corner – where instead of the world just throwing shit at me, and me not being able to do a damn thing about it, now I'm tossing it back.

  "Geez, Cara," I muttered. "Baby mama drama, much?"

  But still, it was true. Until you've walked a mile in a girl's heels, you can't know what she's been through. And mine were the uncomfortable, blistery type, too. Pulling the trigger felt like a fork in the road, where I kicked those damn feet prisons off and bravely strode my own path forward.

  My phone chirruped a notification.

  Of course, it had to ruin my day.

  I stared at the small black rectangle and a sense of dread filled my stomach. I spoke in a hiss as every last drop of air escaped from my lungs.

  "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

  Right in the center of the screen, covering Kitty's face, was a short line of text: one new video message. And right by it, a picture of a demon's face. It was Russell. In two seconds, every fifty foot tall wall of hurt, self-loathing and recrimination that dad's abuse had built in my mind, came soaring right back up. One tiny notification undid all the good work Val had spent two slow, careful weeks building.

  "Just delete it," I muttered, giving voice to my subconscious mind. I should have listened to it, but of course I didn't. I couldn't. It's hard to explain the kind of damage that a parent can do to a kid. You know you're fucked up when every fiber in your body is screaming at you not to pull the string, and you do it anyway, and all you’ve built tumbles down the hill, gathering pace until it falls into a trash heap.

  That's what I did.

  I pulled the string, and Russell's face appeared on screen. It hung there for a second as the phone's slow processor struggled to decompress it, and then came into full focus. I blanched. It barely seemed like the same person I'd left just a short couple of weeks before. The Russell I remembered had the plump, yellowed skin of the habitual alcoholic. This Russell's face was tissue paper crumpled, and a sickly gray.

  This Russell ran his hand through sweaty, thinning hair before he spoke. "Cara," he rasped, his voice but a shadow of the terrifying boom that I remembered – the voice that had ruled my life with fear for so many years. He seemed a broken man.

  "I'm sorry, girl," this Russell said.

  I shivered, and a wave of sickness rose in my throat.

  Girl! You've no right to call me girl. Not after the way you treated me, not after the things you did to me.

  My hand hovered over the screen, ready to kill the message. I was cold with fear, and bristling with hatred. I should have killed it. I shouldn't have let this monster say so much as a word to me.

  Let alone give him a chance to ruin my life –

  again.

  "The way I treated you was unforgivable. I want you to know I'm not asking for it, for forgiveness. I know I don't deserve it."

  He paused. There was something off about the way he was speaking. It was jerky, almost forced. It was like he was an actor who didn't know his lines, and was pushing himself to remember.

  "I haven't had a drink for a week now," he said. The image of his face shivered, and I realized his hand must have been shaking uncontrollably. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen him sober. Hell, maybe I never had. The way I pictured Russell, dad, was with a bottle in one hand and a belt in the other.

  Maybe that's it, I thought. He's sober, and doesn't goddamn remember how to talk to another human being without beating them to a pulp.

  "You leaving," he croaked, "changed everything."

  Good, I thought with a mean streak of vindictiveness I didn't know I possessed. I was just preparing to kill the message and turf Russell from the perfect little life I was building myself when he uttered the fateful words.

  "I know I can't make it up to you," he said. "But there are things I need to tell you; about mom."

  I didn't have any other choice.

  The café was in a quiet part of town, not far from Val's apartment at Drummond Tower. I figured I wanted to meet on home territory, or close enough that it made no difference. There was no chance I was letting him come to the apartment. No way.
I expected to see one of Val's men guarding the door, but he wasn't there.

  So I was here, alone.

  "In and out, Cara," I muttered to myself, hiding out of sight behind a neatly parked black truck with tinted windows. "No letting him inside your head. He's an addict. He probably just wants money or something."

  The second he'd mentioned mom, I knew I needed to see him. I had questions that needed answers, and Russell was the only man living I could ask. Even so, I knew I was being stupid. I reached into my handbag and tapped the Beretta 87 for good luck. It was loaded, and even though it was only a twenty-two caliber, I figured it should at least slow a man down.

  I straightened my dress and stepped into the café. A bell attached to the door tinkled to announce my arrival. Strangely, no one stood behind the counter. The room only held a man in an old, tattered overcoat, shivering by the far wall and nursing an empty coffee cup.

  Russell.

  I shivered. Even looking at the man was enough to make my whole body tremble with fear. But I glanced at the loaded gun – my strength – and it did the job. It reminded me of the girl I was becoming, not the girl I was.

  You turned a corner, girl, I reassured myself. He's got nothing on you now.

  "Cara."

  He half-rose from his chair to greet me, but the arm pushing him up trembled. His voice was croaky, like an old smoker's, and his gray skin glistened with a faint sheen of sweat. I guessed he was probably still detoxing. Reversing forty years of alcohol abuse is more than a week's work; more than a month's.

  "Russell." My voice was hard and uncompromising. I was glad. I needed Russell to know that I wasn't going to be cowed by him. "Why am I here?"

  He pointed at the seat opposite. "Won't you sit?"

  "I'm not staying."

  His head sagged to his chest. "That's fair; I deserve it."

  "You do."

  Russell sank back and slumped into his seat. He looked like the shadow of the man who had tormented me for so many years. He glanced out of the window nervously. I watched his eyes. They were an addict's eyes. They never stopped moving; were always searching for something else; looking for the next drink; even now.