Emma
“Ah, the principe is sleeping today, I see,” Ray said.
Emma had all she could do not to lean away from the man and keep her son from being touched by yet another person as Ray bent down to stroke the baby’s cheek with two fingers.
“For once,” Affonso grumbled at Emma’s side.
Before he said anything else, he shoved his mouth full of food. Emma figured that was a smart thing of him to do.
“Come on, boss,” Ray said jokingly, “he’s a baby.”
“He cries too much.”
Emma didn’t even bother to hide the glare she leveled on Affonso. “His two bottom teeth are bothering him. It’s not his fault.”
“I hear Tylenol works wonders for that, wife.”
She chose not to respond to that nonsense.
Affonso’s idea of placating Cross when he was unhappy or uncomfortable was to medicate him until the child slept and couldn’t bother him with his crying and whining. Emma didn’t mind giving the baby medicine for a fever if he needed it, but his teething hadn’t actually given him a fever.
And for the most part, he was happy to chew on cold things.
Cross was easy to please.
Affonso, on the other hand, was fucking unbearable.
“I see lots of people showed up,” Ray noted.
Emma was just doing her best to ignore the eyes watching her. Too many, really.
Affonso nodded, and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “It’s nice to see the place filled on its first day open.”
Passing a look around the brand new restaurant, Emma recognized quite a few faces. It was just luck that Affonso opened the doors to the new place on the same day that Cross turned two months old. Her husband decided to throw a dinner party at the restaurant for the baby’s milestone. It was one of his few public outings since his birth.
Affonso rarely allowed Emma to leave the house with the baby in tow. She knew it had something to do with the Irish and all that nonsense, but she suspected it also had something to do with the fact Calisto was still MIA.
The fact that she couldn’t take her son with her to do even the simplest and safest of daily tasks often meant Emma chose not to do anything at all but stay home with the baby. She didn’t trust Affonso not to pick up Cross and go out with him, never to return.
Maybe she was being dramatic.
She still wouldn’t put it past Affonso.
Snuggled in her lap, Cross slept with his blanket half tossed over his head to keep the sunlight of the day out of his eyes. He’d barely even twitched when Ray touched him. Emma ran her hand over his soft hair, smoothing out the few wayward strands.
“The teething will pass,” Ray told Affonso.
Affonso still didn’t look all too pleased. “I didn’t have to deal with this nonsense before.”
“The girls must have—”
“I stayed away,” Affonso interrupted Emma with a lift of one brow.
She didn’t need him to say more—his implication was enough. She understood his unspoken words for exactly what they were. Instead of helping his first wife with their children when the girls were babies, he stayed away from home with one of his many mistresses.
Even now, that behavior was not beyond the prick.
Some nights, Emma would find Affonso packing a bag and offering no explanation. Other mornings, she would wake up to a note on the table with the name “Sandra” scrawled at the top and a phone number underneath.
He didn’t try to hide it.
He was never ashamed.
The man was a bastard through and through.
“Few unknowns, boss,” Ray said quietly.
Affonso barely picked his head up when he responded, “The enforcers are watching.”
Emma wasn’t entirely sure what they were going on about, but she suspected it had something to do with the unknown faces around the restaurant. It was opened for regular business, after all. It wouldn’t be such a surprise that people might wander in off the street to eat.
“Did you hear anything about Cal—”
Affonso sighed harshly, interrupting Ray’s question. Emma tried to seem interested in a conversation happening to her left, but it was damn near impossible.
“Leave it alone,” Affonso said lowly.
“I was just ask—”
“Leave it.”
Then, Affonso was standing from his chair and reaching for the sleeping baby in Emma’s lap. She tried to protest, wanting Cross to nap as much as he could, given that they had a busy day ahead of them, but Affonso waved her off. Cross blinked his sleepy eyes open over Affonso’s shoulder, his attention on his mother as he was walked away.
Emma’s heart splintered a little more at the sight.
Unfortunately, with Cross gone from her lap, and her attention gone from keeping him content, she had little to do but sit there looking pretty.
And that just made her feel stupid.
Emma decided to use the few minutes she had to run to the bathroom and freshen up, or at the very least, get a break from Affonso and her watchers. Once she was safely hidden away in the brightly lit, modernly decorated bathroom, Emma washed her hands twice, making sure to take her sweet time while she could.
The brief respites from her daily life helped to keep her from blowing up.
Barely.
When Emma knew her missing presence was probably being noticed by her husband, she slipped back out of the bathroom, ready to put her mask back on.
It was the dark, still form standing against the opposite wall as she came out that stopped her in her tracks. Emma didn’t recognize the man’s features, but he seemed to know her, given he didn’t seem the least bit surprised by her exit. With his arms folded across his broad chest, and his dark reddish hair covering his gaze, he looked entirely intimidating.
Emma pushed back the slight bit of fear climbing up her throat.
“It’s Emmy, yeah?” the man asked.
She blinked.
Only one person called her that in New York.
Emma didn’t get the chance to answer. The man held out an item, and shoved it into her hand.
“Keep that out of sight so your arse of a husband doesn’t see it, girl. I was also asked to tell you that Cross was a good name for the wee lad. His father approves.”
By the time he was strolling down the hallway, and leaving out a back exit door, Emma finally looked down to see what it was.
A rosary.
Black beads.
Silver cross.
It was the rosary she had given to Calisto for Christmas—the one that nearly matched the rosary he had given to her. He’d had it during his accident, as she had seen it in his hospital room when she visited. After, when he’d come home, it was one of two items he rarely let out of his sight, even though he couldn’t remember where it had come from.
She squeezed the rosary in her grip for all she was worth.
Calisto.
“Shhh, there you go, bambino,” Emma whispered softly as she put a finally sleeping Cross down in his crib. She carefully maneuvered the baby and her arms as to not jostle him too much, and wake him up again. As it was, it had taken her a good half hour just to get him back to sleep. Those teeth were giving him hell. “Please, sleep.”
Or stay sleeping, she thought to herself.
It was just one of those nights with a baby.
Some were better than others.
This one was a bad one.
Emma tiptoed as quietly as she could across the plush, beige carpeting, and closed Cross’s nursery door behind her without so much as a creak in the floor or a click of the latch. She waited by the door for a few minutes, listening for even the slightest sound of the baby waking back up.
When she heard nothing, she let out a sigh of relief.
While she was tired, Cross was exhausted, too.
That was the hardest part, she knew. He was tired, and frustrated. Pain and lack of sleep would make anyone fussy, no matter their age.
She’d worried for a long time about what kind of mother she would be given her young twenty-two years. In fact, her twenty-second birthday had passed by without anyone even noticing. She nearly forgot it the week before until her mother called.
It was one of the few times her mother did call. Minnie Sorrento hadn’t even bothered to call after Cross was born, but rather, waited until Emma called to let her parents know the baby had made his way into the world.
Still, Emma worried.
And then she held Cross, and all those worries went away. The most important thing, she figured out, was her son’s health and his happiness.
Nothing else mattered.
It wouldn’t make a difference if she was twenty-two, or thirty-five.
Cross would always be her priority now.
Emma just wished she didn’t have to do it alone.
Knowing it wouldn’t be long before Cross woke up again, Emma decided to go make herself a coffee to inhale that would hopefully keep her awake enough for the next round of sleep-deprivation. Her foot barely hit the bottom step, and she could already hear the voices traveling out from the large kitchen.
“This is a problem, Affonso,” Ray snapped.
“I am well aware of that, Ray.”
“Then do something about it.”
Affonso grunted something a second before the sounds of glass shattering echoed out to Emma’s spot. “I will when I know what is happening—remember who is the boss between us, Ray. I make the calls, not you.”
“Connor O’Neil is missing. This is no longer a little street war, Affonso. Bosses only go underground when shit is about to happen, and they need a safe spot. You are sticking your head in the sand.”
“I am—”
“And do you think it’s going unnoticed by everyone else around you, or what?” Ray asked, a biting sarcasm thickening his tone. “All of your men see it—they’re talking. You’re too old for this, they think. You’re letting shit go when you should be handling it. They think you’re weak, and maybe you are. Maybe you are—”
Ray’s words cut off with a garbled choking sound that made Emma’s breath catch hard in her chest.
“Would you like to finish that thought?” Affonso asked, deadly calm. “Or would you like to think it over first? I’ll give you a few seconds to choose, but know, you leaving here tonight with your tongue still in your mouth depends on your answer, Ray.”
“My apologies, b-boss.”
A few more seconds passed before Emma heard a loud intake of air whoosh, like someone had taken a long, deep breath.
“You have to understand, I’m only telling you for your benefit,” Ray said quietly.
“Or is because now you think you have a chance at my seat with Calisto gone?” Affonso asked.
“He isn’t really gone, though, is he?”
“Do you know where my son is?”
“No,” Ray said.
“Then I will go on assuming he didn’t survive the aftermath of my message,” Affonso replied. “He might have made it out of the alleyway, but that doesn’t mean he won’t still show up in a morgue somewhere.”
Ray didn’t respond.
Affonso chuckled darkly.
“Maybe you should go underground, too,” Ray suggested. “Get away for a bit—take your wife and son until this is all settled.”
“Your intentions are showing.”
“No, you’re just paranoid.”
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Ray,” Affonso said after a long while. “That hand can kill you just as quickly, and just as easily.”
Behind her, Emma heard the soft wails of Cross starting up again.
She couldn’t get back to her son fast enough.
Emma couldn’t remember a time when she had felt as nervous and unsettled as she did walking into the large, three-level mall alone.
Well, she wasn’t exactly alone.
Glancing over her shoulder, she found her enforcer trailing behind a few steps. But even with him there, it didn’t help the sinking feeling in her chest. At Affonso’s demand that morning, he’d informed Emma that she needed to get out and update her wardrobe with a few things for some events they had coming up.
Dinners, charities, and that sort of thing.
Apparently the walk-in closet full of designer dresses wasn’t good enough, because she had worn them all at least once in their marriage. He wanted her to have new things.
Emma tried to refuse, saying she would order stuff in, but Affonso wasn’t having that. Her stomach had dropped a little more when she asked if she could take Cross along, and was quickly refused that request, too.
She hadn’t left Cross alone once since his birth two and a half months earlier. Certainly not for long enough that she couldn’t be there if he needed her.
As she walked to the first escalator and stepped on the moving stairs, Emma reminded herself that Sherry—their cook—was there to handle the baby. Affonso would likely leave Cross with her, knowing he was out of his element for most things the baby needed.
Heaven forbid he had to see a dirty diaper.
It wasn’t long before Emma found a department store she recognized. The dresses might not have the label Affonso would approve of, but she had no desire to drive further across New York just to go to those specialty boutiques. Her husband would have to settle for what she could get close to home.
While Emma searched through racks, and tossed dress after dress over her arm to try on, her mind was somewhere else entirely. Between worrying over her son, and obsessing over Calisto’s still missing status, she rarely had any room left in her mind for much else.
She felt so … out of it lately.
There wasn’t a better word to describe it.
The rest of the world and people around her were still moving, doing their thing and going on like nothing was wrong or amiss. In Emma’s world, everything was off-centered.
She wasn’t sure how long she wandered around the store, pawing through clothes and letting her mind wander, but when she peeked her head up to look at her surroundings, she realized the store had quite a few people in it. It took her a minute to zone in on her enforcer across the floor, checking his watch, and looking like he was in the very last place he wanted to be.
Thankfully, the man didn’t bother her much.
He rarely spoke.
She couldn’t complain.
Emma figured the enforcer would notice her making a beeline for the changing rooms in the back, and follow behind as he usually did, so she didn’t bother trying to get his attention as she headed that way. Despite the amount of people in the store, the line of dressing rooms were mostly quiet but for one or two women handing clothes back and forth to one another over the top of one door to try on.
She disappeared behind one dressing room door, locked it, and hung the six dresses she had picked up on the hook. For a long moment, Emma just stared at herself in the mirror. She had long become accustomed to the mask staring back at her—it had been a part of her daily ritual from the moment she woke up as Affonso Donati’s wife.
The flawless makeup.
Perfect hair.
Clothes without a wrinkle.
Smile in place.
Unhappiness tucked safely away.
Complaints invisible.
Emma didn’t like being alone with this person staring at her in the mirror. It felt like someone else—someone who wasn’t her—was watching her, judging her. Her reflection was simply a distraction for everyone else around her, to keep them from looking too deeply, where they would find her sadness sat upon a throne of disappointment.
People saw her as a queen.
Emma felt more like a prisoner.
And that … that was an awful way to live.
Needing to get the hell away from those thoughts as fast as she possibly could, Emma reached for the first dress hanging off the hook, and pulled it from the hanger. She wasted no time taking her clothes off, and slipping on the silk blue dress that hugged her curves. Despite not being able to do a lot while pregnant, she hadn’t gained a great deal of weight, which meant she didn’t have a lot to lose after Cross was born.
Her hips were slightly wider, and her waist wasn’t as tiny as it had been, but she wore those changes proudly. She did put the small gym room in the basement of the Donati home to good use at least once a day when Cross was feeling up to sitting in his bouncy chair and watching his mother run on a treadmill.
That, more than anything else, had helped to flatten her stomach back down.
Emma found she loved running. It was freeing, even if she was running to nowhere. She could push her limits, run until her legs ached and her lungs burned. She didn’t have to stop until sweat covered her clothes and she just couldn’t move anymore.
It was a sort of relief that she hadn’t known existed before.
She was grateful for it, now.
Emma tried on another two dresses before a soft voice called out, “Is there an Emma Donati back here?”
A brief flicker of fear passed through Emma.
Still, she called out, “Dressing room number four.”
She heard the soft click of heels just outside the door before the woman tossed a red garment into the room, and it landed in Emma’s arms. Then, one of the store’s bags with their logo was also thrown over the door. She stared at the red dress, unsure and wary in her heart.
“Your husband asked me to bring this one back, Mrs. Donati,” the woman explained. “He said you would understand why. He has paid for this dress, and asked that you put your clothes in the bag, and come out with the red dress on. He’s ready to leave when you are.”
Emma blinked, feeling tears prickle at her eyes.
Affonso hated red.
Calisto loved it on her.
But how would he have gotten past the enforcer?
Where had he even been for two and half months?
Emma stopped thinking, she just pulled the red dress on, surprised that it fit her well. She then quickly tossed her purse and clothes into the bag with the store logo on the front, grabbed the door and flung it open.