Dad is scaring me.
“Sit down.”
His tone is frosty, and he gestures at a stool in the room.
Great, I think to myself. I take the seat. What choice do I have? Dad’s not going to let me out of this room.
Dad is not going to let me out of this room.
How fucked up is that?
The steel stool is uncomfortable, moves a little when I shift my weight. He puts his hand into his suit-jacket pocket and pulls out a ziplock bag. It takes me a moment to focus on what’s inside it.
But when I see the thin, white, cylindrical object, panic sends my heart racing.
“I don’t know what that is,” I lie.
“I said don’t lie to me, young woman,” he barks. “It’s yours. Don’t try to deny it. There were others, too.”
“How could you possibly know that’s mine?” I ask a second before it dawns on me. I widen my eyes in shock. “You went through my trash? At my dorms?”
He throws the ziplock back onto the metal table beside me. The plastic pregnancy test pen rattles.
“I didn’t personally, no.”
“You made someone else do it?”
“Frank.”
I’m speechless. The world is spinning. Frank? That’s what he was on about in the limousine, acting all weird! But I know he was just following Dad’s orders. The good soldier.
God damn it, Frank!
“Why?” I nearly shout. It feels like the ground is shaking beneath my feet. The indignity… I’m… I can’t even put into words how I feel. “For how long have you been going through my stuff? My fucking trash? Did you do it when I still lived at home, too?”
I shake my head. I can’t even… I can’t even—
“Since you were a teenager,” he says, waving his hand at me. “Don’t act so surprised. It’s for your own protection.”
“My protection?” I cry.
“All of our protection. To make sure nothing sensitive gets out. You know how dangerous it can be in our situation. You know that we’re constantly targets… the police, the other families. Anything they can get their hands on, they’ll use against us. Against you. They will absolutely root through our garbage. It was for your own protection.”
I shake my head at him in disbelief. Everything I’ve thrown away since I was thirteen was rooted through… seven years of my privacy violated, maybe more.
“Was it always Frank?”
Dad shakes his head. “Not always. But most of the time.”
I bury my face in my hands. I can’t believe it.
All these years.
It makes me sick!
“Get over it,” Dad says. “Your trash is not that interesting. Nobody’s is.”
“You violated my privacy. Do you have any idea how I feel right now?”
He sighs, folds his big arms over his barrel-chest. He’s put on comfort weight as he’s gotten older, but beneath that is still a strong, ex-boxer’s body.
I am physically afraid of my father.
That just makes me even sicker.
“I’m not going to repeat myself more than this last time, Deidre,” Dad warns. “It was for our protection.”
“You should have told me.”
“Then you’d just hide things.”
“I have the right to!”
“Not from me!” he yells, shocking me into silence. “Not from your father!” He points at the pregnancy tester. “Explain this now.”
“What’s to explain?”
“Who is the father?”
I lick my lips and lie: “Someone I met at a party.”
Predictably, Dad’s face morphs into shocked judgment. He’s so old-fashioned.
“I didn’t raise you that way.”
“You didn’t raise me at all.”
“Not this again.”
“You think you were a good father? You never cared about me, especially not once Duncan came into the picture.”
I know why I’m doing this, just to get him off-balance… anything to drive him off-topic. To not make it obvious that his surrogate son, the one he thought he could adopt and then shape into a better version of himself, the one he tried – and failed – to tame, is the father of my baby.
“What’s the boy’s name?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” he cries in disbelief. But then the expression on his face flattens. I can see the cogs in his mind whirring. He’s starting to suspect I might be lying. He knows I wouldn’t forget something like that.
“You’re lying to me, don’t think I can’t tell.” He lifts his hands up, claps them together, rubs them out of frustration. “My own daughter, my own flesh and blood, the daughter I raised, gave a good life. I spilled blood for you, and this is how you repay me?”
“You never once did anything for me!” I fire back at him. “You only did it for yourself, for your empire! You never hid how disappointed you were to have a daughter. You even went out and adopted a fucking son!”
“You watch your fucking mouth,” he snarls. “That’s not how a lady talks. And you’re right,” he says. “I regret that your mother couldn’t give me a son. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy to have you.”
“Fuck you, Dad,” I say, pointing a trembling finger at him. “You were never happy to have me. Not once.”
“That hurts,” he says, comically touching his chest. “You’d say that to your own father.”
I shake my head, fold my arms. He’s so fucking manipulative. “I’m not talking to you anymore.”
“Why won’t you tell me who the father is? If he’s just some boy you… had relations with at a college party.” He winces as he says the words. “Then why do you care?”
“I know what you’ll do to him.”
“What is it you think I’ll do?”
“Have Frank pay him a visit, and then I’ll be reading his obituary.”
Dad sighs over-dramatically. He always was a bit of an actor. He always did think of himself as playing some kind of part in some kind of script.
Real life… never seems to be real to him. Especially when others suffer at his feet.
“I’ll raise the child as my own,” he says, voice stone-cold and resolute. “If it’s a boy, he’ll be my son.”
“What?” I cry. “Are you insane?”
“You’re not to tell anybody about this. I’m sending you to live with Aunt Ger—”
“You sure as fucking hell aren’t!” I shout. “This is my baby, and my life.”
He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You will do as I say.”
“It’s my baby, and you have no right to tell me what to do.”
Dad sighs, spaces his words. “You will do as I say. This is the family way.”
“I don’t fucking want to be in your family. I didn’t ask to be in your family!”
“You will do as I say,” he repeats. “Nobody knocks up Johnny Marino’s daughter without my permission, do you hear me? If the other families get wind of this… if they know that my daughter is the type of girl to—”
“You care more about what they think of you than what I think of you. How sad is that?”
“Reputation is everything in this town. You know that.”
I’m so disgusted. I want to hurl curse words at him but know it won’t make any difference.
“You will tell me who the father of the baby is.”
“No, I won’t.”
“You will,” he says, and he steps forward. I wince, but he takes my hand, holds it. “You’re my daughter, and you will because I love you, and I’m trying to protect you.”
I tear my hand from his. “Don’t try and manipulate me, Dad! I’m not a little girl anymore. You can’t lie to me anymore. We both know why you’re doing this. You don’t want an illegitimate baby in the family. You don’t want anybody to know… your precious reputation. God forbid your daughter have a baby out of wedlock! Oh, what will the other mob bosses think of me?” I sneer at him. “What century are you living in, anyway? Is a woman allowed to even speak in your presence, or does she need your permission, too, you fucking bastard!”
Dad sighs with melodramatic absurdity. “The father never sought my permission. He is not marrying you. The baby will be raised as my own. It is for the good of the child. It is the only way, Deidre.”
I laugh, get up off the stool and back away from him. “You’re so old-fashioned. No, it’s not even old-fashioned, it goes beyond that, Dad. You’re insane.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
I shake my head at him, incredulous. “It’s too soon for that, obviously.”
“Well, then we can both pray that it will be a boy.”
I freeze. The world comes grinding to a halt.
Pray that it will be a boy!
I see it now, I see why he’s doing this. The reputation, the face, the name… that is all important to him.
But no, he sees this as a chance to finally have that son he always said he wanted. The son he wanted instead of me. The son that Duncan was supposed to be.
Of course he could never tame Duncan.
But now… now he can take my baby, and if it’s a boy, he’ll call it his own son.
No!
NO!
He’s not going to get his dirty hands on my child. He’s not going to steal my baby and make it his own.
I don’t want my child growing up anywhere near this life. I want something better for my child than I ever had, than Duncan ever had.
“Why is it you never had another child, Dad?” I ask.
His face turns somehow harder. His lip twitches.
“Something wrong with you?”
“You’ll not talk to me that way.”
“I’ll talk any way I damn well please!” I say. “But you know, I never stopped to think about it before. Why didn’t you just remarry? Have another kid? Have your own son?”
Emotions I can’t identify ripple across his features. “You think I have to explain myself to you?” he cries, laughing. “Tell me who the father is.”
I mock-laugh back at him. “I won’t.”
I turn around, fling open the door. The two guards block my way.
“Try and stop me!” I yell at them, looking each of them in the eyes in turn. I push past them, hear Dad speak to them behind me.
“Let her go,” he says. “She’ll come around.”
Like fucking hell I will.
I storm through the airplane hangar. Frank sees me, waddles up to me.
“Deidre—”
I turn to him, shake my head at him. I can’t keep the tears from my eyes now.
“I trusted you, Frank,” I say to him, my voice sticky. His face drops. “You were my friend! I liked you, you stupid, little man.”
“Dei—”
I put up my hand. “Don’t talk to me. I don’t want to see you ever again.”
I walk past him, past the cage. Duncan is in there, fighting. He’s dancing, skipping, so light on his feet, an artist on the mat.
I can’t even watch. I can’t bear the thought of meeting eyes with him right now.
Out of the corner of my eye I see him fake a jab, spin around on a pivot, elbow Manic in the jaw. Manic goes down like a sack of bricks, and Duncan clambers on top of him, gets him into a Pace choke; a submission hold that stops all blood from going to the brain.
The crowd is erupting. Duncan drips with blood; both his and Manic’s. Tonight, they didn’t stop at the sight of crimson.
Manic slips loose, though.
The fight will go on.
I start to run, push past people in my way. I get to the exit of the hangar, slip out through the crack of the two huge doors, and I run off into the foggy night.
I know what I have to do.
I have to save my baby.
And I can’t let my mind linger on the fact that it breaks my heart to break another’s.
Duncan’s going to be looking for me after the fight, after he wins.
He has no idea he’s the father of my child, has no idea I’m even pregnant, and now he can never know. I can’t tell anybody. I can’t let it out.
If Dad ever finds out, he’ll send Frank after Duncan. He’ll kill Duncan.
This is the only way to save us all.
I dry my eyes, walk out of the airfield toward the road. I find a waiting cab, climb in. There’s not much time.
This is the only way.
I have to leave everything behind.