Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
It’s been three days since Sara went home with her father. Three horrible days. I haven’t heard a word from her despite the calls and the texts, and I’m close to marching over to their house myself and dragging her back to the hotel.
But instead, Carmine told me to meet him here, and now I wish I hadn’t shown up.
“She wants you off the case.” He stands in front of me, arms crossed over his chest, staring me in the face. That’s Carmine: no bullshit, no dancing around the topic, just straight to the bad news.
I sit up straighter. “Sara wants me off the case,” I repeat like I can barely understand what he’s saying.
“You’ve done good work, Angelo. I know you want to get your boy out of prison—”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He flinches slightly, but he had to have known I was going to say that. There’s no way in hell I’m going to turn around and head back to Philly, not when Nicolas is still behind bars. I don’t care what kind of personal shit I have going on with Sara, I’m not going to leave my soldier no matter what.
But Carmine shakes his head. “You’ve done everything you can do and now it’s time to step aside and let the process complete itself.”
“Are you fucking joking right now?”
“Angelo. I’m not your friend right now. I’m your fucking Don.”
That makes me sit forward. I show him my teeth. “Then as my Don you should tell the little lawyer to suck it the fuck up and deal with her problems. I am not going home.”
“Angelo—”
I stand up and storm to the windows. I’m seething, boiling over with rage. This anger is misdirected—Carmine doesn’t deserve my ire right now and I know it—but I can’t help myself. I’ve been living with low levels of mind-numbing anger ever since Sara’s father showed up at the hotel and I found out the truth.
She’s pregnant with my baby.
Even now, even three days later, I still can’t believe it. We first slept together a couple months ago at Brice and Carmine’s wedding, and she’s been pregnant this whole time. From the start, she’s been hiding the truth about the baby, maybe hoping I’d give up and go away, maybe thinking everything would work itself out.
But it hasn’t. If anything, things are so much worse.
Because now I’m attached to her, and I’m attached to my baby.
“You can’t ask me to leave, Carmine.” I stare at the clouds, at the buildings, at the cars moving down below like beetles crawling in the grass. “You know you can’t.”
“I can and I am.”
“That’s my baby.” I turn on him, hands curled into fists, barely holding myself back. “You understand that, don’t you? Sara’s carrying my child, and her fucking family is turning her against me. We had something—”
“Angelo, listen—”
“We had something,” I snarl at him. “We were so fucking close. And now all that’s ruined, all because she kept this secret from me. What the hell was she thinking, Carmine? What the fuck did she think was going to happen, like I wouldn’t notice it when she suddenly had a child running around?”
Carmine holds up his hands and lets out a long sigh. “I don’t know what she was thinking, brother. I really, really don’t. But you’re on the edge right now and I’m afraid you’re going to do something stupid.”
I work my jaw, glaring at him, but I know he’s right. I have this fantasy where I roll up to Sara’s family house and murder her father in cold blood. In my fantasy, I shoot him in the skull, throw Sara over my shoulder, and carry her back to the hotel where we live happily ever after. I raise my baby, she becomes my wife, Nicolas gets released from prison, and the cops involved in the coverup all go to prison.
It’s absurd and it’s never going to happen.
But some sick part of me wants to do it.
“She was afraid,” he says and sits down heavily. He gestures for me to join him, and though I hesitate at first, eventually I take the chair by his side. “You know people do dumb shit when they’re afraid.”
“I could’ve helped her. I could’ve done something, but she didn’t give me a chance.”
“That’s just it, people don’t always make rational decisions. You know that better than most.”
I grunt and stare at my hands, at my scarred and callused hands. I’ve seen plenty of irrational in my day—plenty of fear, plenty of anger. I’ve felt it all, over and over.
“She’s not taking my calls,” I say and still can’t look at him. “She’s not even giving me a chance to explain. If she’d listen, I could tell her—I could make her see—”
“What would you tell her?” Carmine asks. “Would you ask her to marry you? Do the right thing?”