Borrowed Bride: A Fake Marriage, Secret Baby, Dark, Mafia Romance (Mafia Lords of Sin)

I hate hospitals.

The acidic, chemical smell burns the inside of my nose and clogs my throat, the air is cold and dry, and the machines around Tara’s unconscious body beep like a continuous threat.

She looks peaceful, almost. If I ignore the bandages around her arms and shoulder and the bruises and lacerations from the beating she sustained, then I can pretend she’s asleep. If I ignore the look on the doctor’s face when she told me Tara had been shot in the gut, and was clinging to life, then I can pretend she just has a cold and is getting some rest.

It’s a weak lie, one that doesn’t hold up against anything, but I try. I try as the hours tick by and nothing changes. My legs grow numb from the hard plastic chair, and I burn through two boxes of tissues sobbing, but still nothing changes. Marco is absent, out searching for whoever has kidnapped his father, and he’s left me here with Anton, Ben and a host of others to watch over Tara and wait for her to wake up.

I wait for her to tell me who did this to her, but I think I already know.

The weight of the guilt is crushing, suffocating me with each passing hour. This is my fault. The last time we spoke, I asked Tara to dig into Cherry and now, suddenly, she ends up like this. She’s paying the price for my curiosity and there is nothing I can do to help her.

She is my only friend, and I may have just gotten her killed.

A fresh wave of tears warm behind my raw eyes and I close them over, sniffling tiredly.

How do I fix this? Telling Marco the truth hardly made a difference because some fucker has snatched his father and that is an open declaration of war.

While Marco kissed me hard and promised to protect me, I knew he needed to do this. This left me to help Tara, and I have no idea how. I’m not a doctor. Not a surgeon.

I just have to watch her heartbeat dance sluggishly across the monitor, and watch the pump helping her breathe hiss up and down.

“Tara,” I weep softly. “I’m so sorry I got you into this. This was my fight and I never should have involved you. I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.” Clutching at her motionless hand, my heart aches to feel a twitch of recognition from her but there’s nothing.

She took a beating that was surely meant for me.

“Fuck,” I whisper, using up the very last of my tissues. The thought of leaving the room to get more pains me. I don’t want to be away from Tara until I have to, so instead I locate Tara’s belongings and quickly rummage through her purse in the hopes of finding a hidden packet of tissues.

I do find them, but I also find the pregnancy test I asked her to buy for me. I’d forgotten all about it with everything else that was going on. Another thing Tara was selflessly doing for me.

Glancing around the dark room, Tara remains dead to the world and the door is firmly closed against the guards.

Do I take it?

I should. She risked a lot to get me this so I can’t let it go to waste. Leaning over Tara, I gently kiss her warm forehead and then slip into the attached toilet to do my business. In theory it’s simple, but it’s rather difficult to pee on a stick when you’ve been crying on a numbing hospital chair for two days straight. I get more on my hands than on the stick, but it glares up at me with a small countdown as I scrub my hands clean.

I don’t know what to hope for. Positive? Negative? Will either result magically fix all of my problems?

No.

Will either result bring a distraction? Or just disappointment.

I don’t have the answer. A baby was always in the back of my mind since the moment Marco and I met. He made the deal clear. But with Tara in hospital, Dante missing, Cherry in the wind, and Leonardo likely scheming his comeback, this is not a safe world for a baby.

The test beeps and a small animation of a baby appears on the screen.

Pregnant.

“Fuck,” I whisper into the eerie silence of the bathroom. “Hey Tara.” Moving slowly back into her room, I hold up the test. “I’m pregnant. And you’re the first person I’m telling, so you gotta wake up and tell me what the hell I’m going to do with a—a baby.”

In another time, another place, this might have been a moment of joy, but right now, all I feel is terror.

How can I bring a child into this? Into a life where bullets fly as easily as words, where the people I care about end up in hospital beds or worse? Where revenge and betrayal are the language of survival?

A fresh wave of tears overtakes me, and I sink down to the floor, sobbing into my hands. This should be good news, but under the crushing weight of my guilt and my fear of Cherry, it feels like the end of the world.

I need to tell Marco.

I cry until I can cry no more, then I return to my vigil by Tara’s side until a little after midnight when Anton eases himself into the room.

“Gianna?”

“Go away.”

“Marco is coming,” Anton says. “He wants to take you home to wash and eat. You’ve been here three days.”

“I’m not leaving until she wakes up.”

“He’s not taking no for an answer.”

I stare up at Anton, searching his face for the answer to all my problems but there’s nothing other than a soft sadness in his eyes.

“Ben will stay and watch her,” Anton continues. “She won’t be alone.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

I kiss Tara’s head and promise to return the moment I’ve appeased Marco, then I follow Anton out of the room. Ben flashes me a sympathetic look as he heads inside to take my place, then I numbly follow behind Anton as we head out of the hospital.

Marco has Tara in a secluded wing with an entire private medical team at her disposal, at my request, but it doesn’t feel like enough.

My mind spins, weaving between grief, guilt, and the shock at the results of the pregnancy test I left in the trash.

It’s too much.

Maybe I do need to sleep.

Out in the parking lot, a light rain drifts down from the sky as Marco’s black limo pulls up from the street, flanked by two other cars. His door opens, and the sight of him with the wind in his hair and his silver shirt ruffling around his body causes a squeeze of tension through my chest.

I need him.

I need to sink into his arms and have him comfort me.

Life has a different plan.

Marco takes two steps toward me, and suddenly, several cars around us turn on their headlights, blinding Marco and all the other guards around him. Gunfire erupts through the parking lot, and I can only watch in sickening horror as three explosions of blood erupt from Marco’s chest.

He stumbles back with a cry and then disappears from view as Anton’s body slams into me. We crash to the ground and he uses his body to cover me as guns fire, men yell, and tires screech.

No. No no no!

It replays in my head like a loop. The crimson splashes, the twist of pain on Marco’s face.

Not Marco.

Not him too.

Anton lunges upward, opening fire over the top of the car we are hiding behind. As he does so, his trouser leg rides up and exposes the gun strapped to his ankle.

I don’t think. I just grab it.

Then I’m on my feet and sprinting toward Marco while firing in the direction of anyone I don’t recognize. I can’t tell who is shooting at who, my only target is Marco.

If I die, then at least we die together.

I can’t do this alone.

I reach Marco just as the attackers flee. Those that aren’t dead are driven off by Marco’s men.

I collapse down onto the ground next to him with small stones digging into my knees. Dropping the gun, I slide my hand over the pooling blood on his shirt.

“Marco! Marco don’t you dare! Don’t you dare leave me!”

Hot, sticky blood spills over my fingers and soaks into my skin, staining me as Marco remains silent on the ground, dead to the world. Men run around me, people yell and scream. There’s a few more gunshots and then suddenly, arms grab at me, pulling me away.

“No!” I scream as my heart races so fast it becomes a blur. “No!” I try to claw my way back to Marco but the guard holds me back, allowing members of the hospital to sweep in and do their job.

“Marco!”

He doesn’t answer me. I’m released as Marco is hauled onto a gurney and raced into the hospital, along with those around me who also took a bullet or two.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t think.

This cannot be happening.

Marco’s blood stains my hands, and Tara’s stains my soul.

How is this happening? How is my life suddenly crumbling apart as fast as it came together? How are the people I love taking the brunt of this?

“Fuck,” I whisper, wiping my tears with the back of my wrist. Around me is a sea of carnage; dead bodies, injured men, restless guards, and bullet-riddled vehicles.

My head spins and I turn on my heel as acid rushes up my throat, only it has nowhere to go as I come face-to-face with a woman I haven’t seen in years.

A woman with bright green eyes and deep red hair that looks almost black from the rain soaking into the strands. She regards me with a stony look, then delicately wipes the corner of her red lips.

“Cherry?” I gasp, gurgling the word as my body seeks to eject the bile in my gut while shock keeps it at bay.

“You don’t have a lot of time,” Cherry says, placing one hand in the pocket of her tan coat. “I remember you were always a little slow, so I’ll keep this simple.”

“What—what are you doing here? How are you here?”

“You have one choice, if you can even call it that. Walk away, Gianna.”

“What?” I blink furiously as the rain grows heavier, blurring the world around me. This feels like a dream—a terrible, terrible dream.

“Walk. Away.” Cherry sighs wistfully. “Do you need me to spell it out for you?” She walks closer, her heels clacking on the ground like the gavel sealing my fate. “If you enter that hospital, I will kill Tara. And Marco will be next.”

“What?” Confusion explodes out of me and I spit the words. “What the fuck is wrong with you? What did they ever do to you?”

Cherry smirks like a cat. “Them? No, Gianna. This is on you. All of it.”

My stomach falls out of my ass and tension pulls across my forehead. “Wh-what?”

“You know, when I got out of prison on the dime of someone oh so kind, I was excited to get back on my feet. So imagine my disgust when the man I spent a year marking, ends up with you on his arm. The fucking rat that sent me to prison. I spend a year working contacts to get close to him, and you snatch him up in one fucking afternoon.”

“That’s what this is about?” I gasp. “He was your mark?”

“Don’t act so surprised,” Cherry snorts delicately. “I know your game, Gianna. I know you were doing the exact same thing.”

While true in the beginning, her words cut deeply because they are not true anymore.

The utter agony I felt at seeing him get shot and the sickening coldness at touching his motionless body alerted me to one very true, very real fact.

I love him.

I don’t know when it happened, or how. But I love him.

“I’m not⁠—”

“Don’t.” Cherry holds up one well-manicured hand. “I don’t care. He’s mine, you understand? I took out Tara as a warning, but I will kill them both if you don’t leave right here, right now. This is bigger than you know, and I won’t have you fucking me up any longer. You can’t protect anyone, Gianna. I remember how fucking toxic your loyalty is.”

And then, like a cruel twist of fate, my hand instinctively rests on my stomach, over the child I now know I’m carrying. The child Marco can never know about. Not in this world. Not with Cherry hunting us.

Given the carnage around me, her threats hold weight and fresh, hopeless tears prick my eyes as I wrestle with my decision.

“If I leave,” I whisper. “You won’t kill them?”

Cherry smirks again, catlike. “Not tonight. No. So do what you do best, Gianna, and abandon the people that took you in. They’ll be safer without you around.”

What hope do I have? I have nothing. I can’t protect Marco and I put Tara in danger.

I blink quickly, trying to clear the tears and half hoping Cherry is just a mirage from my guilt, but she remains there, staring at me and standing between me and the hospital.

If this is what she does to send a warning, I can’t fathom what she will do if I don’t obey.

So I do.

I leave.

“Fine. I’ll go.” On trembling legs, I turn from the hospital, from Marco, from everything I thought I could have.

With every step, my heart fractures, but the weight of the life growing inside me demands this sacrifice.

Now I have to do everything in my power to make sure no one finds out about this baby.