I fought the smirk as she rolled her eyes at my brother. “I needed a drink.”
Pushing a steaming cup of cocoa her way, Carlo pulled her to her feet and handed her the cup. “And now you have the drink you need and can take it back to bed.”
She opened her mouth, clearly ready to object.
“Gigi, do not push me on this. Go to bed.”
With a loud huff she retreated, calling her thanks to me for the drink I assumed. As soon as she was out of hearing range, my brother took the seat she had vacated and I sat opposite him.
“You need to get your head straight. Gigi knows something went down at the theatre, but she knows I won’t discuss it with her, but she can sniff out a weak link . . .”
I bristled at his suggestion that I was a weak link.
“Calm yourself. I do not mean it that way, but there was something that rattled you that night, something that has been eating at you in the weeks since, and Gigi will hound you over that because she will see you as sad and hurt, so you need to sort your shit out, whatever it is, and then my wife can remain in bed for the whole night. You made your choices and now you have to live with them.”
I laughed, wondering if he was more bothered about her leaving his bed than asking questions. “You wanted the true love and soulmate stuff rather than marrying a nice girl who would ask no questions.”
He huffed. “Too true, brother, but where would the fun be in that?”
“Marco doesn’t have such problems,”
“No he doesn’t. Jay is happy to remain ignorant in anything to do with our business and he got love out of it too, but I wouldn’t change a thing about my wife, in case you were wondering. Perhaps it’s because she was a nurse, had made a choice to take care of people so that she wants the details, to fix them, or maybe it’s just who she is.”
“Is she okay, really okay?” I didn’t need to explain further, he knew I was referring to the fact that Gina had killed someone during the attempted takeover of our family business. Technically we didn’t really know who had actually done the killing as she and Carlo had both shot the person threatening Gina and her future child, but it had messed her up for a while.
“She is, pretty much. It would be better if her parents would accept our marriage.”
Gina’s very respectable parents had warmed to Carlo, until they figured that the family business he ran was not exactly legitimate. Once they knew, they were very much not okay.
“Good. Do you even remember what it was like before we had blood on our hands?”
Carlo shook his head. “Maybe if I think back to our childhood, but our lives, family and home, were built on blood so maybe not.”
He was right, this mood was not good and I needed to sort my shit out. “You should go to bed, to your wife, and don’t wake your daughter.”
He laughed but was up on his feet. “You good?”
I nodded, and in that second knew what I had to do. I needed to take care of Anna, but first I needed to find her.
CHAPTERTWO
ANNA
“It’s okay, Mama is here.” The sight of my infant daughter gurgling cheerily in her crib, her chubby legs and arms waving while her face broke into a gummy smile as my face came into view, melted my heart. “Okay, you win, why don’t we have a last cuddle and then I really need you to nap so I can earn us some money to get out of the hell hole we call home.
Picking Amina up and holding her to me tightly, I inhaled her scent that I convinced myself was the smell of complete beauty and innocence, the only thing of total purity I had ever known. Sitting in a small, creaky chair in the corner, I sang to her as I gently rocked her into the peace of slumber that I hoped would be filled with nothing other than happy things and hope.
She didn’t last long before she was out like a light, leaving me to get changed while she slept soundly in her crib. Leaning down, landing a gentle kiss to her head, I caught sight of myself in the full length mirror. Jeez, what the hell did I look like? Was this really what my life had become? I was dressed no better than a hooker. Hell, a hooker would be wearing more than I was, at least at the start of their shift. I essentially wore underwear, very brief underwear and skyscraper heels.
“I promise you, baby, one day this will be a distant memory. For me, a bad and old memory.” I hoped against all things that my daughter would never know the depths I had sunk to. There was so much I prayed she would never discover about our life.
“Hey, Anna, you’re on. I’ll keep an eye on the baby while I have my break.” One of the other dancers I worked with regularly and trusted, Ro, was already looking in at my daughter.
“Thanks, you’re a star.”
Swallowing down the nausea rising from the pit of my stomach, I headed out, not stopping until I reached the podium where I was dancing tonight.
The place was full. It was always busy at weekends, but tonight it was fit to burst meaning something was about to go down and that made me nervous. Not scared, but nervous. Nervous enough that as well as my usual escape route planned in my mind, I had a plan B and a plan C.
