by Nina Park
But she was right. He'd knocked her up, and he was going to be the kind of guy who at least helped her deal with that. "What do you want to make it look like?" The dodge was tried and true, but it was that for a reason.
She sighed. "I don't know… I know what I don't want it to look like."
He braced himself before he asked the next question. "What is that?"
"I don't want it to look like my kid growing up without knowing their father. It's bad enough when that happens because your parents are dead. I don't want them to not know their father just because he's not around."
The thought of knowing he had a kid in the world and not being involved in its life, turned Vincent’s stomach. It wasn't like he'd followed up on any of his one-night stands, and although he was usually careful, it wasn't impossible that he'd spread his seed or whatever. But that was different than this. Than knowing. Than holding his girl's hair back while she was sick, and then making her a bland meal she could keep down. From seeing her belly grow, a little bit at a time.
There wasn't any point in lying. "I want to be in the kid's life." He took a long, deep breath. "And I want to be in your life. Whatever that looks like. I know your father makes it complicated—"
Alina gave a snort that wasn't even close to ladylike. It made him laugh. "We're not even sure he's alive." The humor in her voice was dark, and he was sure she was doing her best to cover up the sadness and fear that had to be twisting her up inside. "Let's not make him the focus of any plans we make. I'll handle him, if it comes to that."
The image of his fierce woman standing up to her equally fierce father shouldn't have turned Vincent on, but it did. Without question. And it didn't hurt that he could still taste her.
"I want you in my life," Alina said, and he choked back the wave of emotion that threatened to swamp him. "At least, I want to try. See how it works. See if we can make it work."
"Okay," he said. If he said anything else, he was afraid his voice would have broken like a teenager's. And there was no need for that. There was sharing emotions, and then there was acting like a damn fool. But at the same time, that didn't sound like enough. "I like it."
It seemed to be enough for her, at least for right now. She made a sound he interpreted as happy, then snuggled in closer, her body shifting into a soft, settled relaxation. He liked that, too.
Chapter Thirteen
Vincent woke up slow, calm. Part of him was concerned by this; his life was based around staying sharp and on guard in case of any danger. But a bigger part was, at least now, relaxed and at peace with a beautiful woman in his arms. That seemed dangerous in and of itself, but there wasn't much more that he could really do about it. He'd meant it when he'd said that he wanted to be part of her life. Their lives. That he wanted to know his child and watch them grow up.
And if that meant being a little bit afraid to make it happen? Then that was just how it was going to go.
He slipped out of Alina’s arms and pressed a kiss to her head. It was early evening, by his phone and the light outside. He pulled on clean jeans and a fresh shirt and headed downstairs.
One of the many treats Lucas had left them in the house was a couple of solid laptops and a strong Wi-Fi connection. That wasn't going to be everything he needed to understand what was going on, but it was going to be a start. He grabbed the clean credit card he was using, the laptop, and sat down to purchase some vital records.
An hour later, he was at a dead end. He had a birth certificate and social security card for Desdemona Dreiling, but it was a classic movie situation; she appeared on paper two years ago, and before that did not appear to exist. Oh, there were some references to her in old digital mags and a few society web pages, but when he ran those through Internet history archives, it was clear that they also had only appeared a couple of years back.
He was entirely sure that Dez was using a constructed identity and a badly constructed one at that.
This wasn't entirely unheard of in their way of life. After all, he'd gone through two IDs in as many months. And it might very well be that Frank knew, and none of the rest of the family did. But that didn't feel likely, somehow.
The next step was to try and track down some of the people she'd theoretically been involved with due to all these old articles. Maybe the face would give someone a reminder, or maybe she was using a middle name that would spark someone's memory.
Looking into Nick... that was going to be harder. A lot harder.
The phone numbers Vincent needed weren't the type he kept programmed into his regular phone, and certainly not the type he put into a burner. And they weren't the kind that would be available in the Yellow Pages. So, he was going to need to call the people he did know and see if he could arrange a meeting.
He was leaning back in the chair and trying to decide what his next step would be when he heard footsteps padding up behind him. He leaned back for the kiss that Alina was already bending over to give him. There was heat in it, but the quiet sort that was more of a confirmation of sensuality than a request for more.
"Hey," he said.
"Hi." She pulled up another chair next to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. The quiet domesticity of the moment was interesting. He thought he might be able to like it. "What are you up to?"
"Trying to find out more about this woman who is involved with your father. I'm not finding all that much."
Alina nodded. "Any real information on – do you think he's—" She couldn't get the words out.
He wanted to give her something real, something he could be sure of. "I just don't know. There's nothing online at all. If he was dead, I think we'd know that, but I can't even find a reference to the shooting or the public police reports. None of it makes sense."
Alina sighed. "Tell me why you think it's this woman and not Nick."
"Same reason you think it's not Nick. But then, the same reasons we don't think it's him are the perfect cover."
"So where does that leave us?"
Vincent pushed his chair back and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. "I need to go talk to some people. The dark side kind of people," he clarified when she clearly planned to stand up with him. "They'll know you, princess. And it'll make things harder on us."
She flinched at the name, and he couldn't blame her. There was a reason he'd never used it before. A princess in their world was the daughter of someone in the family, someone who lived off her father's wealth and didn't do much of anything. As much as her father had kept her separate from his world, his enemies would know who she was. Without having a clear idea of who those enemies even were, he had no way of knowing whether he was walking her into a trap.
Alina didn't have to like it, but she did need to stay here. She seemed to understand that, even if the understanding tightened her lips and frustrated her.
"Okay," she said.
He blinked a little, surprised. He'd expected more argument than that.
"Is there anything specific you want me to do here?" She gestured around, taking in the entire house with a quick movement of her hands.
"I want you to rest. Relax. Stay as calm as you can. Figure out what you're going to do with yourself when this whole mess is over. Plan out the nursery just the way you want it."
She smiled, but the expression seemed hollow. "Be the princess, then, huh?"
Shit. "That's not what I—"
"No, I get it." Her voice sounded tired, a little worn-out.
A lot had been happening, though, and God knew she wasn't getting enough rest. He'd been fretting about that. He didn't know much about pregnancy, but he'd figured out that women needed good food, lots of rest, and anti-nausea medication. Really, an idiot could work out that much.
"It's fine. You go, do the adventuring, I'll be here, doing the decorating."
He had no idea what to do or say, so he just bent over and kissed her. The heat was gone, but there was something else there. Something gentle and kind and entirely unfamiliar. He thought h
e liked it, but he had no idea what it really was.
"I won't sideline you like this forever," he said, though he wasn't really sure he would be able to keep that promise. "But this is—"
"Men's work?" There was the bitterness he was looking for.
"No. Bloody work. And I like your hands clean."
That seemed to earn him some sort of credit. She nodded, at least, and the hard edges that had been creeping into her expression softened.
"Yeah, alright. I just did my nails, after all." She flashed her bare fingers at him, and he had to laugh.
"We get through this, I'll take you shopping for all the makeup and nail polish you could possibly want."
"The smell makes me sick now," she said, and this time her smile looked much more genuine. "Go on. I want this done. I want to know what's happening. And I want to know – what our lives look like from here."
It was a sobering question, wasn't it? If Frank were dead, they would be on the run for a long time. People in this line of work – they didn't forget things. Vincent and Alina would have to be dead. For good.
It didn't matter. If that were what it took to keep their baby safe, he and Alina would make it happen. Vincent knew that and knew she would agree, even before he said a word.
"Be safe," he said and kissed her one more time before he headed out of the house.
Chapter Fourteen
It took every ounce of self-control Alina had not to fling the laptop at the wall the second Vincent was out the door. She wanted to hear the shatter of the glass and metal more than almost anything else. The worst part was that she couldn't even get really righteously angry at him. Every word he'd said was right; she could be recognized, she could blow their cover, and in the hands of the wrong person, she could put them both in incredible danger. She didn't want a single part of that to happen. Clearly.
But being benched was frustrating and demeaning. She didn't want that either.
The problem was that she didn't bring much to the team. Vincent was a bodyguard, a made man, and a shrewd planner. She was a pretty party girl who'd gotten into this mess by an accident of birth. She was no one. Not really. Just a chess piece to be hauled around like so much luggage. She couldn't even find out if her own father was alive.
And then something clicked over in her head; Alina had absolutely no idea how she hadn't thought of this before. She'd been looking for her father under his own name; of course the papers would have reported it if Frank Costa, supposed patriarch of the supposed Costa branch of organized crime in the city. But when her father needed to conduct business that flew under the radar, he didn't go by Frank Costa. When they'd traveled together, he'd used any number of aliases to avoid being noticed with her. It was absolutely within the realm of reason that he was still alive somewhere, under one of those same aliases.
She pulled out a piece of paper and took a couple of minutes, writing down every single name she could remember that they'd ever traveled under. She used the laptop – suddenly grateful that she hadn't smashed it – to compile a list of every major hospital within the immediate area where Vincent had told her the shooting occurred. And then she started making phone calls.
She was on her third hospital with the tenth name before she struck gold. Claude Degas – an alias constructed around two of his favorite painters – was registered at the St. Stephen Hospital in the center of the city. She got off the phone and circled the name with a flourish. She couldn't be entirely positive, but Mr. Degas had been hospitalized for several months, had come to the hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest, had nearly died twice and then suffered two serious infections. He'd been on a ventilator for a huge amount of that time. And now he was in a rehab wing, slowly recovering.
Her father was alive. Thank God, her father was alive. Alina didn't realize she was shaking until she wrapped her arms around her chest and squeezed herself as tightly as she could. He was alive. She would get to tell him – tell him about the baby, tell him about Vincent, laugh as he was furious that his baby girl had been naked in the presence of a man, all of it. He was going to be furious about all of it, and she didn't care. He was alive.
She grabbed her phone again and dialed Vincent's number; instead of him picking up the phone, however, the call went directly to voicemail. That was odd, but maybe not entirely surprising. Depending on who he was going to talk to, his phone might have been turned off or even taken.
The right thing to do was to wait for him to come back. To explain what she'd found and to get his help finding the right way, the safe way, to get to the hospital. But Vincent hadn't told her where he was going, how long he would be gone, or what was going to happen next. And there was a not-small part of her that was absolutely livid about the whole situation.
The smart thing to do was to wait. But she wasn't going to do the smart thing. She was going to do the thing that led to her getting the one thing she'd been hoping for over the last several months. Confirmation that her father was alive. A chance to hold Daddy's hand one more time.
And there was another piece, too. Someone had come for her father. It was possible he was still in danger. After all, what Vincent had been saying for weeks was true; if her father was alive, why hadn't anyone called the two of them home? Because ultimately, once the threat was determined to be external, there was nowhere in the world she would be safer than within the Costa compound.
So either the threat wasn't external or, possibly, no one else knew what had happened to her father. And if that was the case, he might still be in danger.
And that was actually the piece that made her reconsider her next steps. If her father was in danger, what was she going to be able to do? Scold someone to death? Nag them into behaving better and leaving both her and her father alone? It wouldn't get anyone anywhere.
She had to sideline herself, which was the most bullshit thing imaginable – but also true. She needed help to do this right. And if she couldn't get it, then taking off on her own would make sense. But she had to at least try.
She still got dressed in clean clothes, pulled her hair up into a no-nonsense ponytail, and made sure that she was ready to head out at a moment's notice. Vincent would be back eventually, and then she would be able to take the right next step.
Chapter Fifteen
Driving into the territory controlled by the Delgado family was like walking up to the German trenches in World War One and asking if anyone had a cigarette you could borrow. You were asking for a bullet in the head. No matter what was happening now, Vincent was attached to the Costas, and everyone knew it. That was how things went; your allegiances were always known. This was protective for the family and protective for you. People didn't mess with the Costas; you tended to be left alone. But you also didn't walk away from the Costas; everyone knew who you were, and trying to be someone else... just wasn't going to work out in the long run.
Vincent thought of that old science fiction movie and the instruction to fly casual as he drove down onto S Street, looking for a bar he'd known very well, a long time ago. From the years before he'd been a made man with the Costas; when he'd just been some muscle for hire. There were folks here who might have answers for him. If they were willing to talk.
He parked the car and climbed out. Two men were stationed outside the bar's entrance. They were nothing so obvious or uncouth as guards; that would be frowned on by the local law enforcement. They weren't anything like bouncers, either; that would offend patrons of the establishment.
They were just Delgados, and they were present to make sure that nothing happened in the bar that shouldn't happen in the bar. Nothing more exciting than that. Totally innocent.
Vincent left his piece in the car; he was here on a peaceful information gathering mission, and there was no need to antagonized anyone. That said, he was more than a little on edge, and he'd been in enough hand to hand confrontations that he was more than comfortable holding his own. Even in a space like this, the odds were in his favor if someone approached
him with a gun.
The two men stood up just a little straighter as Vincent approached. He recognized one of them from way back, but the other man was new. Vincent and Benny had been friends growing up, not aware yet of the difference between their extended families. Just two boys who liked to play stickball and shoot hoops together. He wasn't sure what sort of reception he would get from the man he hadn't been in touch with for more than a decade, but Benny stretched his arms out wide and enveloped Vincent in a hug.
"My man," he said, pulling Vincent in close.
They slapped each other's backs, and both of them pretended that they weren't feeling for shoulder holsters. Still, the embrace was honest.
"Benny," Vincent said as they pulled apart. "How these bastards treating you?"