I peeled off my shirt, discovering that I couldn’t lift my left arm high without whimpering. Dammit, that was one of the worst yet. I didn’t know what a cracked rib was like, but I’d heard the guys talk about it enough in the restaurant. Since I still couldn’t breathe normally, all I wanted to do was lie down.
But there was one thing first.
I unclasped my bra, reached into the hole where the foam pad lay, and tugged out the money. Fifty-seven dollars. I crouched against the bed, realizing I was going to have to shift the frame with a bummed side. It was tempting to hide the money elsewhere.
But fear of my father discovering it gave me the strength to scoot the heavy metal frame the half-foot I needed to access the plank in the floor. That was the good thing about the unfinished space up here. There was the ability to manipulate my surroundings to create hiding places.
A quick calculation told me that eight months of scrimping brought my total to just over a thousand dollars.
Not enough….
I placed the board over my treasure, tugged the bed back in place, and crawled into bed. I didn’t have the energy to undress further. My black slacks were grimy from the shift, but who cared? I moaned and brought my hands over my side.
Focusing on the fact that I’d survived, I tried to calm my racing heart.
But my body didn’t listen. It refused to recognize that I was momentarily safe. After the encounter with my father and the earlier brush with death, every fiber of my being was on high alert.
My hands skated lower, brushing over the soft expanse of my belly. The ghost of an ache throbbed keenly there. It was everpresent, far more prominent when I was alone. This memory had the ability to overpower the current pain radiating from my side.
It was a loss that scarred my soul.
I whimpered and curled into myself. A thousand bucks wouldn’t save me. Not fast enough. And if my husband didn’t allow me to work, I didn’t see a way to escape.
“I could always kill him,” I muttered.
Death and I were acquaintances. If push came to shove, I was brave enough to take a life. It wasn’t like it was hard, just immoral. But it wasn’t the black mark on my soul I feared. It was living with the consequences. Mob politics were a dangerous game of chess, and as a widow, it would be infinitely more complicated to stay out of the spotlight and maneuver my way out of this hell.
No, I wouldn’t kill my husband.
I would be stuck with the masked devil. A prisoner, living in a gilded cage. Possibly for years.
“Oh, dio!” I gasped but then hissed sharply as the sudden exhaled breath punched my battered side. The pain wasn’t strong enough to stop my mind racing. I was gettingmarried.That meant…oh, dio sopra, that meant something worse than being trapped by a murderous monster.
My husband would want a baby.
No,no!“I can’t have a baby with him.”
But I didn’t see a way out of that. A good mob wife would lie there and take it. Marriage meant starting a family. That was what I was, after all. A cow, bartered and sold. Ready to be bred.
My fingers curled into fists over the ghost in my belly. That would tie me far more permanently to the Irish mobster.
How the hell was I getting out of that portion of this arrangement? Closing my eyes, I fought through the rising nausea. Prevention required medical assistance. I would have tofind birth control, spend my precious savings to purchase some. But the risk of going to a clinic was too great. One of my father’s soldiers might find out. And I couldn’t go to anyone at the restaurant, to have them purchase it on my behalf.
I racked my brains trying to think of anyone else.
Maybe…maybe Amanda Messina would do it. She seemed helpful. She’d told me that she wanted to help. Granted, she’d been talking about getting me out of a marriage, which she had no idea was impossible. But this? This was practical. This was something she could do.
“No good,” I muttered, wrapping my arms around myself after clutching the folded blanket at the foot of the twin bed.
Amanda worked for McDonagh. While I could tell her to keep the transaction a secret, she might slip up. That was the best-case scenario. The worst? She would outright tell my soon-to-be husband what she’d done. I didn’t think she was spiteful. But either way, using her was a risk.
With a sigh, I tried to push the problem off. There would be all day tomorrow to dwell on it. Right now, I just needed to sleep. To recover the best I could. Instead of drifting to sleep, though, I stroked the deep divots that stretched the skin on my belly and mourned.
***
The plan came to me in the wee hours of the morning. It wasn’t great, but it was better than nothing. I had exactly a hundred dollars tucked back in my bra. The one ray of silver lining was that it hadn’t been as hard to move the bedframe this morning. My side ached with a dull twinge, not the outright throb that had made me toss and turn. The ribs probably weren’t broken.
Hurrying down Cherry Drive, I made it to the trendy bakery in good time. It wasn’t a great plan. For one, my motherwould likely tell my father she’d given me twenty bucks for coffee. It wasn’t wholly unusual that I purchased things for the employees. Papa would only be upset that I didn’t ask him. He liked to shower the members and associates of the famiglia with gifts.
